One of the greatest challenges of manned space exploration is the health damage the human body suffers during spending long periods in space

Amorphical’s groundbreaking research helps address the health issues caused by prolonged space travels.

The extreme conditions outside Earth’s atmosphere cause multiple health issues for the human body. During the first few days of microgravity, astronauts report adverse events such as nausea, vomiting, headache and fatigue. These symptoms usually pass after 3 days or so, but the long-term health damage – a rapid loss of bone and muscle mass, remains a critical health problem, with only a partial solution in the form of daily extreme exercising, causing problems by themselves.

The reason for the rapid loss of bone mass in space is a decreased division rate of osteoblasts (bone-building cells) – 50% compared to Earth. The lower the osteoblast division rate, the slower new bone is built.

Many people in the modern world look for ways to increase their bone mass in order to strengthen their body, minimize the risk of osteoporosis and prevent fractures. One of the ways to achieve it is adding a calcium supplement to the daily diet.

Until today, all the known and available calcium supplements were crystalline and large in dimensions, which means low solubility and a requirement that they will be first dissolved by the stomach acidity and digesting activity. Hence, they have limited absorption followed by low bioavailability and low efficacy.

The only noncrystalline calcium supplement in the world is DENSITY, made up of nanoparticles of amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC). Its unique structure and morphology doubles its absorption compared to the most common supplement, crystalline calcium carbonate, and subsequently enhances dramatically the calcium bioavailability and bioactivity at targeted organs.

Amorphical has participated in a NASA’s Spacelab study, which tested the efficacy of ACC for astronauts in space. The results revealed that osteoblast division rate was improved significantly and reached similar accelerated rates as achieved on Earth in the presence of ACC. This study proves that DENSITY, a nano amorphous calcium carbonate supplement, should be efficient even in space, helping astronauts maintain their bone building rate while minimize bone loss associated with space travel. The encouraging results will help extend the time humans can spend in space and significantly aid worldwide space research and exploration. NASA and Amorphical are currently planning their further collaboration.