>>10672150reposting from a differetn thread:
it would help a bit, but is it enough? dunno. your body uses pressure on the feet while walking to help pump blood up the body, and your legs help serve as a kind of reservoir of blood for the rest of the body in case you need a sudden increase of blood flow.
would wearing weights help with pumping? will gravity pull on the blood enough that it properly collects where your body expects it? pressure on your brain might be higher than it is on earth, what's the effect of that? dunno. we experience vision problems if we're in microgravity too long. does the same thing happen with reduced gravity? dunno.
side note - having skeletal muscles isn't just about moving around, too, it provides an important last-ditch source of protein for metabolism in an emergency. in starvation mode, your body will eventually start cannibalizing muscles for calories. too long without food and you'll start burning up the muscles you need to stay alive. take two people with the same amount of body fat but different muscle development because one is adapted to smaller gravity - the low-gravity one will die first in a famine. we dont have to worry about that here but if i was a mars colonist i'd be very concerned about the idea of losing our food supply.
also i dont believe we know anything about how low/micro-gravity affects vertebrate development
