On Monday 3rd of February Jodie Moss successfully defended her PhD thesis!
Over the course of three data collections and five experimental chapters the thesis investigated the effects of a hydration strategy, cooling strategies, and heat acclimation - the three main ways to "beat the heat". The heat acclimation chapter has already been published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology (see the publications page for the link) and the other chapters will be submitted shortly. Jodie is the 1st of the Roehampton lab to viva - 1st of many hopefully! Well-done Jodie - very well-deserved!
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Learning outcomes: By the end of this session you should:
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Aim: To introduce students to the fundamentals of data collection techniques in thermal physiology Learning outcomes: By the end of this session students should:
In January 2019 a brand new Environmental Physiology starts at the University of Roehampton. It is a 3rd year optional module for Sport and Exercise Science students and is being delivered by myself and Steve Trangmar.
The module is designed in a way to maximise laboratory experiences with at least one of the two weekly sessions being practical in nature. It is assessed by an exam and a lab report - a report that will be a write-up of the students' own self-designed Environmental Physiology study. The topics include:
A quick post to summarise some of the lab group's highlights from 2018. I know that some people are not fans of such posts but I feel that years seem to fly past so quickly that sometimes it is nice to take a step back and reflect...
Congratulations to all involved On to 2019! Chris Training and competing in extreme environmentsHaving assisted Carlos Sainz Jr. and his team prepare for the heat of Singapore in 2017 I was invited to share some insight with some of the other F1 support crews in Barcelona (May 2018). I gave 3 talks: Session 1. Physiological demands of driving in the heat Session 2. Beating the heat – acclimation, cooling, and hydration strategies Session 3. Hypoxic training for physiological adaptations In order to help the audience listen (rather than have to scribble down too many notes) I produced a hyperlinked "reference list" for each section. The list can be found below.
Following on from the success of last year, we opened our lab doors again to runners preparing for the Marathon de Sables - this year was a little different though!
This year, as part of her PhD thesis, Jodie Moss devised and ran a heat acclimation research study. The participants undertook two 5-day blocks of heat acclimation with heat stress tests performed before, mid-way, and after. Some of the MdS runners wanted to do their own thing in the chamber (e.g. they had their own training plan/ideas and/or couldn't commit to the number of sessions required to take part in the research project) and so chose to take the paid heat acclimation consultancy route. Running the study and consultancy simultaneously meant that Jodie and members of the research team* were in the laboratory from ~ 5 am to 10 pm every day for about three weeks! As a supervisor it was a joy to see how everybody chipped in to help - the model was one that I had seen working very effectively at Prof. Stephen Cheung's lab in Canada many years ago and it was great to finally see a similar set-up up and running at Roehampton. * While Jodie was the driving force behind the heat acclimation, the study would not have been possible without the help from many other members of the lab (who, I believe, were paid in coffee and snacks!). Specifically:
Part of being a good supervisor is, in my opinion, to know when to push and when to hold back. Jodie has been extremely busy over the last month collecting the data and as a result has hardly slept! Once data collection was complete I told Jodie that:
We will get back to the PhD once she has had a break! For the next two weeks Ralph has competition for time in the chamber – the Marathon de Sables runners are in town! The Marathon de Sables is a 6 stage event in which competitors from all over the world attempt to cover ~150 miles in temperatures of up to 50°C. For the UK competitors (approximately 25% of the field), repeated exposures to high temperatures (heat acclimation) is a highly recommended part of race preparation – heat acclimation allows the runners to prepare mentally and physically for the task ahead. While the optimal heat acclimation approach isn’t known, it does seem that to enhance exercise performance in the heat more is more and individuals should be exposed to very high temperatures, for a prolonged period of time, on a number of occasions. Over the next two weeks at the University of Roehampton the MdS competitors will be exposed to temperatures of up to 50°C for 1 – 2 hours on 5 occasions under the careful watch of Ralph and Jodie. If you are interested in reading more about heat acclimation please take a look at a recent review article that I wrote with Tom Reeve (University of Roehampton), Professor Stephen Cheung (Brock University, Canada) and Dr Gary Hodges (Brock University, Canada): The Effects of Heat Adaptation on Physiology, Perception and Exercise Performance in the Heat: A Meta-Analysis Below is a figure summarising some of the key data from the review. It is clear that although ideally competitors would have 15+ days of heat exposure, positive changes are observed earlier. It is too late for this year’s MdS but if you are interested in acclimating to the heat for an event in future please get in touch. If you follow me on Twitter you will have seen that the lab is nicely busy at the moment! Over the next few weeks I will provide more specific information and investigator profiles but in the meantime here is a very brief summary of some recent activity:
New equipment: Over the last 3 or so years we have invested over £150k in to the Physiology lab at the University of Roehampton so have plenty of toys to keep us busy! The latest additions (below) arrived just before Christmas and I have a few more cool things on order.
Data collection: PhD student Ralph Gordon (@Ralph_ExPhys) is currently very busy in the environmental chamber looking at the effect of hyperthermia on neuromuscular performance - this is why I spent ~3hrs in 50degC yesterday reaching a core temperature of 39.6degC! I will get Ralph to write an update for here soon. Tom Reeve (Reeve_SportSci), Dr Richard Mackenzie (mackenzie_dr), and I have been busy in the cell culture lab exposing some mouse cells to various heat "treatments" with and without the inhibition of certain proteins. This has been a steep, but interesting, learning curve. A few more treatments and a lot more Western Blots to go before we are done! Research progress: We submitted one neuromuscular physiology article for review last week (fingers-crossed) and have a few cooling manuscripts, one acclimation manuscript, and one Antarctic manuscript in progress. New students: I am very pleased to welcome Jodie Moss (@JodieMoss1) and Keeley Wright to the group. Jodie is a PhD student about to contribute to our heat work here while Keeley is a MSc student who is about to undertake a CIVD project. Updates to follow! |
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February 2020
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