The Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences told how they can distinguish “positive” reasons from “negative”
Russian scientists are preparing a new device for determining physical activity, duration and quality of sleep, as well as the level of stress. The actigraph, as the device is called, looks a bit like a watch worn on the wrist.
American astronauts have been using this actigraph for a long time. It registers the position in which a person is at night or daytime, measures the degree of physical activity at different times of the day, and also records the heart rate and “writes” a cardiogram. All this is sent to a computer, which gives personalized advice to each owner of an actigraph: for example, if you slept little yesterday, a personal “consultant” will tell you how much and at what time you better rest today, if you did little exercise, advise you to increase the intensity of your classes and prompt what is better to eat for lunch, based on daily energy expenditure.
As was reported to “MK” in the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, with the help of actigraph it will also be possible to indirectly determine the level of stress of astronauts. The fact is that biochemical methods alone (that is, taking blood or saliva for analysis) cannot accurately measure this level. After all, stress hormones also rise from intense training, from a successfully completed difficult task, which can ultimately mislead specialists. The program installed on the actigraph allows simply pressing the “clock” button to mark the work performed on board (physical training, repair work, scientific research, etc.), as well as periods of rest. This will allow not only to determine by the number of movements lack of sleep and frequent awakenings at night, but also to find out how high the heart rate rose during this or that type of activity. Then the computer will compare this data with the result of a biochemical blood test, and in the presence of the main sign of stress – an increased level of cortisol and glucose, it will “tell” about the cause of the stress experienced by the astronaut. And he will give recommendations for correcting the regime of work and rest, nutrition and physical training, even in an autonomous interplanetary flight.
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