Back Pain in Astronauts Offers Treatment Clues Here on Earth
Approximately 52 percent of space travelers report some form of back pain in the first 2–5 days of space travel, according to a study of 722 space flights. The condition is dubbed “space adaptation back pain,” and while most cases were mild, the pain felt was enough to hinder astronauts’ abilities to complete tasks.
Another study found that military helicopter pilots and crew members who experience fluctuating gravitational forces are almost three times more likely to develop lumbar (lower back) disc herniation compared to the general population. Astronauts are more than four times as likely to herniate a disc, according to a 2010 NASA study.
Radostin Penchev, MD, resident physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital, says the high prevalence of back pain among these groups is understandable because the human spine is built to support our bodies under the gravitational forces experienced on Earth. One prominent feature is the spinal curvature—an S-shaped bend in the spine that allows it to resist gravity, remain flexible, and absorb weight and impact. However, in microgravity, this curve is reduced.
Resistance exercises such as isometrics, squats, lunges, and bench pressing have been a mainstay of back pain prevention in space travelers, and space stations are equipped with exercise machines and other resistance training tools. Specialized suits that provide spinal resistance similar to that experienced under Earth’s gravity have also been used. These suits combined with exercise regimens relieved space adaptation back pain in 85 percent of subjects.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine published a new report in the September 2021 issue of Anesthesiology that predicts further study among astronauts of these methods—including specialized suits and certain exercises—may provide insights for treating back pain in the estimated 80 percent of Earth-bound people who experience some form of it over their lifetimes.
Other methods to prevent back pain among astronauts mentioned by the researchers include massage, nutritional supplementation to increase vitamin D and caloric intake, neuromuscular electrical stimulation, and negative pressure devices, all paired with resistance exercise.
The full article in Anesthesiology is available online at https://doi.org/10.1097/ALN.0000000000003812.
Massotherapy
mas-oh-ther-uh-pee
NOUN
A collection of bodywork modalities designed to improve health through manual manipulation of soft tissues, including stroking, kneading, pressing, tapping, and shaking. Intended to improve local circulation, reduce pain, and promote relaxation.
Massage Doesn’t Just Make Muscles Feel Better, It Makes Them Heal Faster and Stronger
A new study confirms the link between mechanotherapy and immunotherapy in muscle regeneration in mice.
The study, published in Science Translational Medicine, aimed to evaluate whether massage and “mechanotherapies” (i.e., massage guns) actually improve healing after severe injury.
Researchers used a custom-designed robotic system to deliver consistent and tunable compressive forces to the leg muscles of mice and found that this mechanical loading (ML) “rapidly clears immune cells called neutrophils out of severely injured muscle tissue.” By the same process, inflammatory cytokines were removed from the muscles, resulting in an enhanced process of muscle fiber regeneration.
“Our work shows a very clear connection between mechanical stimulation and immune function. This has promise for regenerating a wide variety of tissues, including bone, tendon, hair, and skin, and can also be used in patients with diseases that prevent the use of drug-based interventions,” says first author Bo Ri Seo, PhD.
The team is continuing to investigate this line of research with multiple projects in the lab, and they plan to evaluate the mechanotherapeutic approach in larger animals, with the goal of being able to test its efficacy on humans.
Read the full study online at science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abe8868.
Chair Massage with David Palmer
In this episode of The ABMP Podcast, David Palmer, commonly referred to as the “father of contemporary chair massage,” discusses what his “aha” moment was when developing seated massage, where the chair massage routine was born out of, keys to success for practitioners, and what the future of chair massage holds.
Shiatsu
shē-ˈät-(ˌ)sü
NOUN
Developed in Japan, shiatsu is a finger-pressure technique utilizing traditional acupuncture points. Similar to acupressure, shiatsu concentrates on unblocking the flow of life energy and restoring balance in the meridians and organs in order to promote self-healing.
Nobel Prize Awarded for Research on Temperature and Touch
Two scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine for their research on how the human body perceives temperature and touch.
As reported in The New York Times, “Dr. David Julius, a professor of physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, used a key ingredient in hot chili peppers to identify a protein on nerve cells that responds to uncomfortably hot temperatures. Dr. Ardem Patapoutian, a molecular biologist at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, led a team that, by poking individual cells with a tiny pipette, hit upon a receptor that responds to pressure, touch, and the positioning of body parts.”
The identification of pain receptors caused an initial uptick of interest from pharmaceutical companies, but related treatments based on these findings have run into major obstacles, and the interest from drug makers has significantly waned. One major issue is that some sensitivity to pain is useful—without it, people run the risk of not receiving signals when something is too hot to touch. Another obstacle is that humans are equipped with multiple heat-sensing channels, and blocking one causes those other channels to compensate. The channels identified in the Nobel Prize winners’ work are involved in multiple processes, which makes it difficult to isolate the receptors as targets for non-opioid painkillers.
Read more at nytimes.com/2021/10/04/health/nobel-prize-medicine-physiology-temperature-touch.html.
“Stop Telling Massage Therapists to Get a Doctor’s Note” by Allissa Haines
“It’s a super big pet peeve of mine in online massage communities. Someone will post a question about clinical contraindications . . . and roughly 32 people will chime in and say, ‘Get a doctor’s note.’ This breaks my heart every time, and here’s why.” Read this blog at abmp.com/updates/blog-posts/stop-telling-massage-therapists-get-doctor-s-note.