Kidney Stones

There's nothing like a rollicking kidney stone tale to remind you of the preciousness of good urinary health.

But still, it's a kidney stone, something usually reserved for grandpas and people who weren't manly enough to catch a real disease, like herpes. But what can start off as an excruciating inconvenience here on Earth can do some killing damage up in space.

Wait... How Can That Kill Me?

First off, astronauts are waaaaay more vulnerable to kidney stones than the rest of us because they're losing bone density in space. And that lost calcium isn't just seeping off their bodies like bone sweat; it's ending up in their urine. And extra calcium in urine is one of the causes of kidney stones.

So astronauts start the game with a stony target on their backs (or pee holes). Plus, peeing in space is no walk in the park to begin with, so astronauts are less likely to take in a lot of fluid, because they don't want to mess with space toilets. Lower fluid intake coupled with higher concentrations of calcium in their urine equals a very serious risk of getting a kidney stone on an extended journey. In fact, between 2001 and 2006, 14 American astronauts developed stones after they got back to Earth. That's a whole lot of pebble passing.

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"It's like I'm passing a razor blade made of nails!"

Second, getting rid of that kidney stone in space is a totally different ballgame from passing it here on Earth. No gravity, no X-rays and no high-quality pain medication, so an especially big kidney stone is going to incapacitate its victim, at the very least. And if the stone drifts the wrong way for some reason, or if the astronaut develops stones in both kidneys, which, once again, is very likely -- forget it. Blocked kidneys are totally a death sentence in space. And if House is to be believed -- and you know it is -- kidney failure is not a pretty way to go. But at least it's not getting hit by space trash, right?

Дата добавления: 2015-10-26