Dave Turner, a stay-at-home father of twin 4-year-old boys, hasn’t had a vacation in years. So the Littleton resident spent the last 10 days in bed in Denver, reading news online, watching movies and playing video games for science.
Turner is one of 10 men who volunteered to kick back for a week, so University of Colorado researchers could try to understand the cellular changes that take place when muscles don’t get any action.
Patients stayed prone for showers, medical tests, even bathroom breaks. The researchers expect that the work will eventually lead to therapies for astronauts, whose muscles shrink with every day in weightless space, and people with muscle disease.
That’s all fine and good, Turner said, and it’s nice to be helping out NASA, which funded the research. But really, he just wanted a break. Awkward bathroom breaks and showers on a plastic-lined gurney were worth the hours of down time.
“Being a full-time dad is a blast,” Turner said. “But this is kind of like a vacation.”
During his last real vacation, a trip with his wife to the Cook Islands in the South Pacific six years ago, the couple “did as little as possible.”
That’s also been his mission for the last 10 days, a goal set by Louis Stodieck, director of CU’s BioServe Space Technologies, and principal researcher for the bed-rest study. Stodieck and his colleagues split volunteers into two groups of five, so they could analyze results from the first group before beginning the second.
At first glance, results look roughly like he expected, Stodieck said.
He’s especially interested in a chemical called myostatin, which increases as muscles waste away.
“The question has always been, exactly what role does myostatin play in maintaining muscles?” Stodieck said.
By studying the precise levels of myostatin and associated chemicals, he hopes to come up with a way to slow or stop the muscle-wasting process. Simply understanding the data will take months, he said.
Thursday afternoon, after doctors plucked a few freckle-size pieces of muscle from his thigh for the third time, Turner and his roommate, Bo Eastwood, said they were both ready to go home.
Turner said boredom just settled in Thursday morning. Until then, he was enjoying his days of leisure.
And Eastwood, a 27-year-old wrangler in Hudson, said he’s loved watching movies, reading, being served his food. The undisclosed amount of money he and the others received for their time was nice, but he’s ready to return to his life.
“I miss my friends, my horses, the dogs,” Eastwood said.
Staff writer Katy Human can be reached at 303-820-1910 or at khuman@denverpost.com.