My knowledge of anatomy is rather limited, so I wasn’t too surprised that I had never heard of the “multifidus” muscles that line the spinal column and have the task of supporting movement of the vertebrae. Neither had I heard of the “transversus abdominis” muscles in the abdomen that act as a natural corset, stabilizing the lumbar spine.

I now know that weakness of these muscles is associated with low back pain, something I learned the hard way. It was such pain that introduced me to these muscles and started me on a journey that meandered from outer space to the inside of a cell.

But let’s start at the beginning.

It was just an innocent little move. I turned to put a file down on a chair and felt a little twinge in my lower back. I didn’t think much of it, but by evening my back was getting sore and by the next day, the pain was excruciating and shooting down my right leg. Walking was almost impossible. An MRI showed a herniated disk and I was assured that with time the pain would resolve. I turned to AI to see what I could do about the hellish pain. And that is how I encountered the problems faced by astronauts who return to Earth after having spent months on the International Space Station.

When circling the globe at 28,000 kilometres per hour, the pull of gravity is balanced by centrifugal force generated by the forward velocity. As a result, astronauts experience the phenomenon of weightlessness — essentially a continuous free fall. Since muscles do not have to work against the pull of gravity, they shrink.

A study of astronauts who had spent six months on the International Space Station........

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