Temperature Regulation during Upper Body Exercise: Able Bodied and Spinal Cord Injured.

摘要

This paper will consider human thermoregulatory response differences between upper and lower body exercise. In addition, the thermoregulatory problems of spinal cord injured individuals are examined. For able-bodied individuals, the rise in core temperature is independent of the skeletal muscle mass employed and dependent upon the metabolic rate during exercise. The avenues of heat exchange, however, are different for individuals performing upper body and lower body exercise. During upper body exercise, there is a greater dry heat loss from the torso, however, no additional heat loss (as compared to lower body exercise) occurs from the exercising arms. If an individual performs upper body exercise in cold water, he/she will lose a greater amount of heat and be more susceptible to hypothermia than during lower body exercise. A spinal cord injury will impair man's ability to thermoregulate because of: (a) loss of vasomotor and sudomotor control to the areas of the insensate skin; (b) a reduced thermoregulatory effector response for a given core temperature; and (c) a loss of skeletal muscle pump activity from the paralyzed limbs. Keywords: Arm-crank exercise; Core temperature; Cutaneous blood flow; Disabled populations; Sweating responses; Thermoregulation. (kt)