‘Major Problem’ Discovered for Astronauts Making Long Trips

The zero-gravity environment of space can have a number of bizarre impacts on the body, including strange headaches.

Astronauts with no previous history of headaches may experience migraine and tension-type headaches if they spend over 10 days in space during a long-haul space flight, according to new research published in the scientific journal Neurology.

This may pose a major issue for the future of long-distance space travel, researchers say.

The paper studied 24 astronauts from NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and investigated how their time on the International Space Station affected their headaches.

Before the study began, nine astronauts never had any headaches, while three had at least one major headache in the past year that impacted daily activities. None had ever been diagnosed with migraine.

While on the ISS, 22 of the astronauts experienced at least one headache, with a total of 378 headaches reported across all the astronauts during the cumulative 3,596 days in space.

The researchers also found that while 38 percent of the astronauts experienced headaches on the ground prior to space travel, 92 percent had headaches during space missions. Ninety percent of these headaches were tension-type headaches, while 10 percent were migraines.

“Changes in gravity caused by space flight affect the function of many parts of the body, including the brain,” study author W. P. J. van Oosterhout, a researcher at the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, said in a statement.

“The vestibular system, which affects balance and posture, has to adapt to the conflict between the signals it is expecting to receive and the actual signals it receives in the absence of normal gravity. This can lead to space motion sickness in the first week, of which headache is the most frequently reported symptom. Our study shows that headaches also occur later in space flight and could be related to an increase in pressure within the skull.”

These headaches were also found to have been more intense during space missions, and more likely to be migraine in the first week of space flight. Twenty-one astronauts had one or more headaches during this first week, totaling 51 headaches, 12 of which were migraine-like.

None of the astronauts reported any headaches in the three months after returning to Earth.

The astronauts did report their own symptoms, so they may not have remembered everything entirely correctly. Additionally, this study doesn’t show that space necessarily causes headaches; it simply highlights a correlation between the two.

“Further research is needed to unravel the underlying causes of space headache and explore how such discoveries may provide insights into headaches occurring on Earth,” said Van Oosterhout. “Also, more effective therapies need to be developed to combat space headaches as for many astronauts this a major problem during space flights.”

Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about astronauts? Let us know via [email protected].