Published: February 26, 2019 | By Alexis Bullock
Jem Cheng, a PhD student in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University (supervised by Dr. Maureen MacDonald), delivered a talk on her work entitled:
“Acute vascular responses to heat stress in younger and older adults: a proposal”
Following, Jem summarized the take home points of her talk…
- Heat stress has been widely adopted in many practical and therapeutic settings in order to improve general sense of well-being; however, recently, researchers have discovered that it is also beneficial for cardiovascular health.
- As an emerging area of research, much about the mechanisms by which heat stress improves vascular function is unknown.
- Older individuals, who have some existing arterial dysfunction as a result of the natural aging process, may have the most to gain from heating interventions; but currently, there is limited research to support this idea.
- Jem’s study will recruit both younger and older individuals. Jem will measure changes to arterial stiffness, endothelial function, microvascular function, inflammation, and more in response to 2 conditions: (1) 45 minutes of lower limb hot water immersion or (2) quiet sitting.
- Jem hopes to uncover the time course of change in vascular function, and the cellular changes accompanying functional changes of cardiovascular health with heating in both younger and older adults.
Please feel free to contact Jem (chengjl2@mcmaster.ca) if you have any questions about her research or would like to discuss future work.
This blog post was first published by the MIRA Trainee Network. Read the ​original article.​​
