Extending The Envelope - Military and Civilian

When I worked as a military research scientist, strong brave men got hazardous duty pay to spend a day with me.

I measured what humans can do, physically and mentally, and how to make them better at it. I tested pilots undergoing acceleration to see what determined susceptibility or resilience to blackouts and other g-force effects. I tested combat swimmers to see what makes them swim faster, farther. I worked on modalities to prevent astronauts' bones from de-mineralizing, because without the pull of gravity, muscles do not make the bones retain calcium. After weeks in space, astronauts return with the equivalent of years of bone loss. I worked on countermeasures. I tested ground troops to see how much they could carry and why.

My work trains the person, making him self-contained and able to withstand harsh conditions without special clothing, tools, or pills. Another department works with garments that help resistance against temperature, weaponry, and other effects. Another group are the 'gadget guys' making yet more things I have to make the guys able to carry around. Another department is pharma-chemicals - what drugs they could develop and administer to block need for sleep and food, heighten focus, or increase strength or speed. Some heart drugs are long-known and used for steadying the marksman's hand by decreasing the contractile pulse of the heart.

Click the labels under this article for more Fitness Fixer on each topic. I have written several posts, with more to come, on my work to "extend the human envelope."

Look for tomorrow's post for one of the things the pharmaceutical groups work on - Neutropeptide Y Generation for Healthier Stress Response.

Labels: aerospace, drugs, g-force, military fitness, performance enhancing modality, stress, swimming, tests of fitness/health

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Beijing Olympics & Martial Arts Class Teach Common Sense Cooperation

The opening ceremonies of the Beijing Summer Olympics were a quiet, powerful reminder of mutual cooperation as path to strength, beauty, and peace. Thousands danced in metaphor for healthy society - that we cooperate to create a masterpiece, and each individual is significant. Responsibility and support flow both ways.

Paul and I were in China in 2001 for a martial arts competition. I hope to post training stories with some of the motivating photos from there. Discipline and eagerness to do good were all around us. We haven't been back to China yet, although we live in other areas of Asia for part of each year. In many places where we live there, human, animal, and machine-powered vehicles of every description overflow the roads, in all directions at once, often with no traffic lights or signs to guide. Both lanes may flow in either or both directions at once. Turns occur any place needed at the moment. Problems are infrequent because people are taught cooperation from early age. It is an Eastern philosophy, way of life, discipline, and virtue. Words are not needed. Westerns who are not aware that cooperation and thoughtfulness is taking place mistake this highly evolved order for disorder. When tourists see someone coming their way, they may not not cede way or cooperate, but insist that others are in their way. Traffic accidents frequently involve tourists.

When I teach martial arts classes in the US, I teach beginning students something that startles them. If a blow is coming toward you, don't stand there and get hit. Move out of the way. Some students first insist on trying to bat my arm/leg/head out of the way with theirs. I tell them not to do that. If two arms hit each other, whose will win, theirs or the other person's? You don't know? Better to get out of the way instead. What if it is an incoming baseball bat. Or weapon. Or an opponent you have gravely misjudged,even if they only seem to be an old lady. In Zen the concept is called, "Don't be there." In common sense it is called "duck." Some beginners insist the air is theirs to stand in and they want to meet an incoming object with their body. Instead of ducking, or at the least, deflecting it without damage to any party (or maybe training some discipline and arm hardening techniques), they throw their arm up to meet mine, then depart class cursing and exaggerating to administration that they broke their arm, and that they were right to deliberately disobey the teacher who was teaching a valuable lesson called, don't hurt yourself or others. In class, I give the students a moving drill. They practice a specific footwork drill to keep them moving. I walk around the class - right in their way, one student at a time. They are confused. Some try to push or hit me to get me out of *their* way. Some try to stand still to resist, but get deflected off balance. This continues until one student remembers the point of the lesson. They get the smart idea to go *around* me. The message - polite, cooperation. No confrontation. No hitting someone in your way, or believing no one owns the ground but you. Just smile and say excuse me. It seems to be a titanic message to some.

Click the arrow to watch group traffic cooperation in this short movie from a street in Vietnam.

Paul and I are comically (to locals in the street) co-occupying a tiny front basket of a bicycle rickshaw. Locals routinely travel by pedicab, but our height and Paul's epic shoulders blocking the driver's view and feet at the same time caused so much merriment by on-lookers that it won us many new friends that day. The driver looked to weigh no more than 100 pounds (45 kilos), pedaling a steel bicycle weighting at least 200 pounds (90kg). In another post I will tell of Paul's and my ride on an Olympic bobsled on an actual competition track. A professional driver took first seat of the 4 man sled, and we put Paul in second seat, as it was the only place for his long legs. For new readers, Paul is almost 7 feet tall (2 meters, 13cm). We were supposed to have a 4G ride (4 times the usual pull of gravity on earth), but Paul's giant feet, it turned out, prevented the driver's elbows from moving enough to steer the 15 sharp turns. We got quite an extra ride - the wildest the driver said he ever had. To be continued in a future post on g-forces.

China posts to come - Athletes are afraid of the squat toilets, why some Chinese citizens wear masks, Eastern societal practices that promote physical health through advanced age, answers to reader questions that pile in, and more on Olympics and human potential.

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Labels: g-force, martial arts, mind, Olympics, spirit, stress, video/movie, walking

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Indiana Jones Rocket Sled

The new Indiana Jones movie came out this past weekend, the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It is set in 1957 with fun fitness and iconry of the era, for future blog posts. Today - the Rocket Sled.

In the early part of the movie, Indiana Jones and the Soviet Russians brawl through a US military testing base in Nevada. Jones and a Russian officer wind up on a rocket sled, which blasts them on a speed track into the desert.

Rocket sleds are one of several devices that create and test the effects of high acceleration on equipment and the people who use them. High acceleration forces occur when jets take off quickly, when launching a space flight, to eject from a hit (compromised) fighter jet, on roller coasters and spin and fall rides, when you fall from a height, and any time you change speed and/or direction quickly. Interesting changes occur in the body under acceleration. Acceleration is one of the areas of my study as a research physiologist and was my work for a time at two facilities testing air vehicle and human systems.

G-force is a measure of acceleration, not force, but the term g-force is also used for the reaction force that results from acceleration. More on meaning, spelling, and math of g and G in another post. Too much g-force can result in g-LOC (Loss of Consciousness), pronounced "jee-lock"in English, but just as meaningful when using the Cyrillic pronunciation of "loss." When piloting a multi-billion dollar property (the fighter jet) G-LOC is not a good thing for anyone. The pilot may convulse, called "doing an Elvis" because the flailing looks like playing an air guitar - a real air guitar. Then the pilot may "ding" (lose consciousness) and the vehicle may "descend below the level of the terrain" (crash) and "disperse energetically" (explode) and "value unfavorably" (be destroyed), and the crew and anyone they land on may "achieve a negative health status" (die).

So we test.

A rocket sled is a small platform. Rockets propel it on the ground on rails. It creates high onset g-forces for a time limited to the length of the track. When personnel or equipment riding it sit as in a car or plane, they experience acceleration pressing them from front to back (on an x-axis).

To measure the higher g-forces with short onset experienced in jet bail-out procedures, a vertical ejection tower can be used. A small seat is propelled quickly upward by a contained blast force under it (like lighting a bomb). If they are positioned to sit upright, the acceleration acts on them from head to foot, on their y-axis.

To experiment with varying accelerations over different amounts of time and onsets, one device used is a centrifuge. A long support arm swings around and around a center anchoring point -like swinging a ball on a string around your head. A container, often ball shaped, at the end of the support arm holds the equipment or personnel being tested. The ball can rotate to position the people inside at any angle to simulate the changing positioning of a cockpit during maneuvers, for example.

What happens to the people in these testing devices? Often they throw up all over my nice equipment. Some of my test subject pilots used to have contests who could eat the worst thing to redisplay on testing day. One ate plastic bugs just for the fun he was sure to cause - then he didn't throw up, no matter what we did to him. In vertical (y-axis) ejections, there is high impact and acceleration forces on the discs and spine. Back injury is a concern for ejection scenarios. Vibration, both during acceleration and non-acceleration situations, such as for helicopter and jack hammer operators seems to be a high contributor to back pain. It is not known if the various vibration devices sold as fitness devices are of the kind (vibration frequency or amplitude) that contribute to joint pain. G-LOC is another consideration. Why do we test it? To see how to prevent it, if we can screen for who is more likely to get it, if we can train those prone to it to be more resistant, and so on, in g-force tolerance improvement programs (g-TIP).

The set of photos at right is a well-known one of USAF Colonel John Paul Stapp, M.D., Ph.D., riding the rocket sled. He was a pioneer of acceleration study and is also known as the originator of the expression "Murphy's Law" for things that can go wrong. The effect on his face along the x-axis is not from his high speed, but the acceleration which is increasing in photos ii and iii, and decreasing in v and vi. Even though his speed is greatest in photo iv, speed is not increasing or decreasing much, so there is little effect.

More on the interesting effects of acceleration and environmental testing from roller coasters to jets to movies in posts to come.

Related Fitness Fixer:

• Space Walks
• Helium Speech - An Astronaut Calls the President of the United States
• Altitude Sickness on Flights
• A Reader Asks About Osteoporosis and Walking Lightly
  
• Collapsing Astronaut Gives Healthy Reminder
• Click labels under this post for more Fitness Fixer on each topic. For example, for all posts on fitness issues portrayed in the movies or other media, click movie/media fitness.
  

Labels: aerospace, circulation, disc, g-force, injury, lower back, military fitness, movie/media fitness, performance enhancing modality

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