Bad things happen to a human body in zero gravity. Just look at what happens to astronauts who spend time in orbit: Bones disintegrate. Muscles weaken. So does immunity. “When you go up into space,” says Saïd Mekari, who studies exercise physiology at the University of Sherbrooke, in Canada, “it’s an accelerated model of aging.” Earthbound experiments mimicking weightlessness have revealed similar effects. In the 1970s, Russian scientists immersed volunteers in bathtubs covered in a large sheet of waterproof fabric, enabling them to float without being wet. In some of these studies, which lasted up to 56 days, subjects developed serious heart problems and struggled to control their posture and leg movements.
Weightlessness hurts us because our bodies are fine-tuned to gravity as we experience it here on Earth. It tugs at us from birth to death, and still our intestines stay firmly coiled in their stack, blood flows upward, and our spine is capable of holding up our head. Unnatural contortions can throw things off: People have died from hanging upside down for too long. But as a general rule, the constant push of g-force on our body is a part of life that we rarely notice.
Or at least, that’s what scientists have always thought. But there is another possibility: that gravity itself is making some people sick. A new, peer-reviewed theory suggests that the body’s relationship with gravity can go haywire, causing a disorder that has long been a troubling mystery: irritable bowel syndrome.
This is a rogue idea that is far from widely accepted, though one that at least some experts say can’t be dismissed outright. IBS is a very common ailment, affecting up to an estimated 15 percent of people in the United States, and the symptoms can be brutal. People who have IBS experience abdominal pain and gas, feel bloated, and often have diarrhea, constipation, or both. But no exact cause of IBS has been pinned down. There’s evidence behind many competing…
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