imagine a science laboratory that teaches us more than we ve ever known about disease, muscle and bone health and eyesight. a lab with the unique environment that affects the human body in ways we ve never seen before. in fact there s no place like it in the entire world. that s because this lab doesn t exist on earth. this is vital signs. i m dr. sanjay gupta. the lab we re talking about is the international space station. when we say this is a mobile lab, we really mean it. the iss is orbiting around the earth at a speed of 32,000 kilometers an hour. that s more than 30 times faster than a commercial jet. with near zero gravity conditions, special diet and modified exercise, it s the perfect place for experimenting on the human body. space was once called the final frontier, and now for medicine, it s a new beginning.
get personalized inside. you ve got some real nice fans blowing on you at nice so you don t suffocate. can i step in here? yes. don t tell anyone. i ll try it out. it could be pretty relaxing. do you strap in then? basically you have a sleeping bag that s velcroed to the wall. you also have a head strap because having your head float when your body is strapped in is very creepy to a lot of people so they like having their head strapped down to the pillow. the pillow is real thin. and that s your personal space. it s my personal space. it s not big, but it will do. and just float out of there when you re done? yes, exactly. rise and shine and ready to go. we re learning a lot from space, through the planned experiments onboard iss, but the space station is also inspiring new ideas and technology right here on earth. from the iss to an operating room, technology from space is saving lives.
benefitting us back here on earth. that effect of floating around causes changes in the body that look a lot like all the bad things that happen as you get older. your bones start breaking down, your muscles start breaking down, your heart shrinks, fluids shift around in your body. that s fascinating. it sounds like what you re saying is this environment kind of accelerates aging for a period of time. it can be reversed when you get back down toe earth, but the ida that you can accelerate aging, you can test things and see them more quickly? yeah. you can see them naturally resers. many times necessity is the mother of invention, especially in space. a long way from the nearest hospital, nasa discovered a way to do long distance ultrasound. on the space station, the crew members have to take care of each other and we don t always have a doctor on board and we don t have an x-ray machine, but we do have an ultrasound. and so a group from henry ford