I don't think people realize that you need gravity to exercise your muscles, and if you don't have gravity, your muscles have nothing to have resistance against.
The IV in her wrist is most likely for rehydration and electrolyte balance
There's nothing permanent about what they've done, but they have to be very targeted about what they're doing from an exercise and nutritional standpoint to get back there.
Sunita Williams' visibly thin wrists could indicate muscular atrophy, particularly in the forearm muscles, which are less used in space.
That amount of time in space is crushing.
While great strides have been made in space-friendly food, sustaining on that diet for a very long time is likely not going to provide your body with optimal nutrition that you'd get from eating a more varied diet on Earth.
I'm not surprised that we saw and we're seeing that she clearly has some issues there, because women tend to be impacted by these things more than men,
In order to counteract some of these negative effects, in particular the bone loss, we have what is called a resistance exercise device,
In space there is a headward redistribution of body fluids and that can raise intracranial pressure, the pressure around the brain and the eyeball,
Since the whole body is exposed to micro-gravity, the heart doesn’t need to pump around as much blood as it used to on Earth, and the cardiovascular system deteriorates,
On orbit, we lose 1% of our bone mass in a month if we don’t do anything about it,
Without gravity, when you get into space your spinal cord actually relaxes. You don’t have gravity pushing all your vertebrae together, and then when you go into space you get taller, slightly – I grew about about half an inch/three quarters of an inch.”
Unfortunately I didn’t get to stay taller, because as soon as I got back within 24 hours you shrink back down, gravity does that to you,
The best results that we have to show that we're being very effective is that we don't really have a fracture problem in astronauts when they return to the ground,"
Shielding is best done with heavy materials like lead or water, but you need vast quantities of it,
This happens to every single astronaut, even those who go into space just for a few days."
We try to keep the bone strong and muscles strong to minimize any effects of microgravity,
There is some individual variability on how quickly they recover, but it is pretty impressive to see how they will turn the corner and really adapt quickly,
We don’t see any need for any special precaution,
I had a pretty severe case of SANS,