Bedrest studies involve lying in bed at an inclination of 6° so that your head is lower than your body – at least one shoulder must touch the bed at all times. Similar to bedridden people on Earth, astronauts in space suffer as their bones and muscles lose strength from under-use.

More particularly we are interested in the cardiac deconditioning seen in astronauts and in the present case in healthy volunteers participating to those microgravity simulation studies.

These studies are performed in the Envihab facility with the Institute of Aerospace Medicine at the German Aerospace Center (the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt – DLR).

We are running the study on cardiac reconditioning and cardiac MRI experiments during the AGBRESA study which is a multilateral DLR – ESA – NASA sponsored
study where the efficiency of the artificial gravity generated by a centrifuge is tested as a countermeasure against microgravity induced cardiac deconditioning.

In 2015-2016, we participated to the ESA-RSL 60 days bed rest study
which tested the use of high intensity resistive jumps on a sledge jump system as a countermeasure against microgravity deconditioning.