[Radiation] may impair astronauts ability to function, and may also continue to affect them once they come back home, said James Joseph, lead scientist for the Neuroscience Laboratory at the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts. Maybe what we need out there is also a bit of nutritional shielding.
While it may sound hokey, the fruity idea addresses a serious question for scientists planning for the day when astronauts will venture beyond Earth orbit on long multi-year voyages to the moon, Mars and beyond. Astronauts on such long journeys risk exposure to space radiation in levels many times those we experience on Earth. Over time, researchers said, those high-energy particles could gradually destroy enough brain cells called neurons to impact cognitive abilities like memory and motor skills.
We can certainly expect that space travel will lead to risks to the central nervous system, said Charles Limoli, a radiation oncologist researcher at the University of California San Francisco who was not related to Josephs study. And those effects are progressive, presently untreatable and poorly understood.
NASA researchers are certainly working on enhancing spacecraft shielding to ward of radiation dangers switching from the commonly used aluminum to polyethylene and other materials, for example -- but others hope to find methods of protecting astronauts from the inside out.
Which is what Joseph and his colleagues hope to do. Their studies of laboratory rats found that those that dieted on strawberries, blueberries, kale and spinach suffered less neurological damage than their non-nature food-eating counterparts.
According to their research, irradiated rats on berry diets were still able to complete mazes set before them, while simply irradiated rats were not. In a separate study by Bernard Rabin, a professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County who has worked with Joseph, said berries and vegetables also helped prevent tumor growth in laboratory rats. The findings were presented Monday at the 15th Annual Space Radiation Workshop in Port Jefferson, New York, a meeting held in conjunction with the third annual International Space Radiation Workshop.
The success may be due to the antioxidants in fruits and vegetables that have been known to help fight the oxidative effects in the brain during the aging process.
Cells in the brain oxidize over time naturally much like rust grows on a scratch on a car door, explained Barbara Shukitt-Hale, a research psychologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and member of Josephs team. Antioxidants work against that process in both aging cells and apparently irradiated ones, which often behave like prematurely aged cells, she added.
Fruits or even fruit extracts may serve as an antioxidant supplement for astronauts bound for long space voyages. They could be started on the diet supplement before launch, then carry supplies of the fruit extract with them during a mission.
Even grape juice could help, and maybe Tang too, since were talking about astronauts, Joseph said jokingly.
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