Astronauts Examine Their Hair For Epigenetic Factors
Article written and posted by Kris Zurek on 11/07/2016 (all rights reserved)
It is interesting that astronauts are being now examined for epigenetic factors. We welcome these new projects as they add more validity to what we offer in our holistic centre in terms of Hair Analysis.
It has been known for some time that outer-space is a potential danger zone, especially in the context of cosmic radiation. Van Alen Belts and Earth’s atmosphere provides a protective shield against this cosmic ‘bombardment’, but astronauts, living for a longer time in space stations do not have that protection. … There are probably other factors yet to be discovered, which can upset the delicate homeostasis in the body, thus novel ways are being implemented to monitor astronauts’ health.
In the light of this, new programs have been scheduled to monitor health and to check the genetic expression of people who work and live in outer-space.
And how do they do it this time? … Would you believe that they check hair samples to identify what’s bothering ‘space-workers’.
Biologists from Japan believe “hair growth could slow down or stop under the stress of space flight as the genetic signals in the roots are scrambled”. For this reason, British astronaut Tim Peake is contributing clippings of his hair to the latest experiment on board the International Space Station.
Researchers at the Jikei University School of Medicine in Tokyo have collected hair samples from dozens of astronauts before, during and after their trips into orbit.
The first study of this kind, published in the online journal Plos One, focused on follicle cells taken from eight men and two women for signs that their DNA might be being expressed differently by the body in space through a process known as epigenetics.
The article in the Australian Times April 5th of this year summarized that “the scientists found signs that some genes became busier, with some sending out up to 4000 times more messages to the rest of the cells, while others were dampened over the astronauts’ six-month stay on the space station. They were particularly struck by an average 50-fold increase in the activity of FGF18, which tells hair when to stop growing. This could indicate that hair briefly stopped growing in orbit.”
As we can see, the interest of the scientific community to check various health markers through hair/bulb analysis is growing up.
This goes hand in hand with our own work. CELL-WELLBEING research company, which we are associated with, processes the information gathered from the root of the hair to identify epigenetic factors. This is done using complex quantum entanglement profiling models. To scan hair/bulb samples at our clinic, we work closely with CELL-WELLBEING, giving us a professional edge in this field of analysis.