The glory of spaceflight does a good job of masking the smaller, less magnificent details of space travel. For instance, did you know astronauts have a long, rich history of getting constipated in space? It’s been documented for years, and now researchers may have figured out why people hanging around in zero gravity struggle to poop.
According to a new study published in Nature Communications, the problem more than likely begins with the bacteria and astronauts’ guts. Researchers tracked 52 astronauts before, during, and after missions aboard the International Space Station, analyzing 488 of their plasma samples. They were specifically looking for any one of hundreds of chemical compounds.
They found that around 40 changed during spaceflight, suggesting that a lot of gut bacteria started fermenting protein instead of food that gut bacteria love most: fiber.
Why Astronauts Struggle to Poop in Space, According to a New Study
This all points to the digestive process slowing down in microgravity. When food moves more slowly through the intestine, the supply of carbs and fiber that gut bacteria love to eat plummets. The microbes will not be stopped from eating, so they’ll start devouring whatever they see, even if it’s not their preferred fibrous meal. That means protein gets eaten instead, producing a different collection of chemical byproducts that start showing up in elevated levels in astronauts’ blood.
The changes seemed to start soon after launch and generally disappeared within a few days of returning to Earth. Diet, of course, played a role, but the research team was able to put a fairly precise percentage on the impact diet played on metabolic changes: 27.5 percent. The rest was microgravity doing a number on astronaut guts.
The researchers propose a comically simple, un-technological solution: eat more fiber when you’re in space. When you up the amount of slowly fermented carbohydrates in space diets, you’ll encourage gut bacteria to stick with fiber rather than reverting to proteins as a last resort, thus improving gastrointestinal health and letting the poops flow freely.
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