Members of the kinesiology exercise science faculty are, front row, from left, Brendon McDermott, Matthew Ganio and Stavros Kavouras; back row, Inza Fort, Michelle Gray, Jeff Bonacci and Tyrone Washington.
October, 2012
When you?re building a great team, you recruit from the best schools. That?s true from basketball to biomechanics.
The University of Arkansas in the past two years hired three professors who are graduates of the University of Connecticut, the top-ranked kinesiology program in the nation for 10 years in a row. The three new hires and two other young professors with impressive early research productivity combine with veteran faculty members for an exercise science program with the potential to make a big impact, particularly in the area of hydration.
The Connecticut alumni are Matthew Ganio, who joined the College of Education and Health Professions faculty in the fall of 2011, and?Brendon McDermott and Stavros Kavouras, who joined the faculty this fall. Ganio and McDermott earned their doctoral degrees from Connecticut in 2009, and Kavouras earned his in 1997.
Michelle Gray, who earned her doctorate from the University of Arkansas in 2007, and Tyrone Washington, who earned his from the University of South Carolina in 2008, round out the five-person kinesiology roster. Gray is in her third year on the faculty, and Washington is in his second year.
Inza Fort?is the veteran of the exercise science faculty. She came to the university in 1983 and is currently serving as co-director of the university?s Wally Cordes Teaching and Faculty Support Center and as program coordinator for exercise science.
Jeff Bonacci, clinical assistant professor, directs the athletic training education program, one of 27 entry-level master?s programs in athletic training education in the United States and the only accredited program in the Southeastern Conference.
?This team and the work they are doing is extraordinary,? said Tom Smith, dean of the College of Education and Health Professions. ?They are learning new things every day in the areas of hydration, thermoregulation of the body, strength and fitness as we age, and in general what is going on inside our bodies when we move. We?re talking about everyone from marathon runners to older people who carry their own groceries and make their beds. The information this talented group of faculty discovers in their research will improve lives across the board.?
The National Academy of Kinesiology ranked Connecticut?s doctoral program in kinesiology No. 1 in the nation. The five-year ranking in effect through 2015 was based on data from 2005 through 2009 and took into account nine performance metrics involving faculty and seven measures involving students.
Ganio and McDermott serve on the Medical and Science Advisory Board of the Korey Stringer Institute, a research and advocacy institute based at UConn whose goal is to prevent sudden death and illness in sports. Kavouras serves as a European adviser for the Gatorade Sports Science Institute, which also uses research and education in hydration, as well as nutrition science, to help athletes optimize their health and performance.
Ganio, Kavouras and McDermott have worked together and gotten to know each other at research conferences since leaving Connecticut.
?We are all interested in the area of thermoregulation and hydration,? Kavouras said. ?Of course, each one of us sees the same picture but from a slightly different point of view. I am thrilled working with these great scientists. We know very well that working together will make all of us more productive.?
Hydration Information
No other issue may be as important in athletic performance as proper hydration of the body, but researchers are discovering that even mild levels of dehydration also may affect cognitive function, not just at the gym or playing field, but in the classroom or boardroom.
?Even though water is the most important nutrient, we tend to forget it,? Kavouras said. ?A significant percent of people tend to under-drink and so are chronically mildly dehydrated. This phenomenon happens because we don?t feel thirsty until we are already dehydrated.
?We have found that a mild degree of dehydration has detrimental effects both in health and exercise performance,? he continued. ?I believe that scientific knowledge on hydration and health is approximately where smoking research was in the 1970s. There are still many things to learn.?
During the past several years, Kavouras, a native of Greece, has taught and conducted research at Harokopio University of Athens, where he has been working on a basic but important question: Is there a benefit of maintaining optimal hydration or should we drink based on our thirst?
?In a series of studies, we have found that even a mild degree of dehydration can decrease exercise performance both in kids and adults while augmenting the risk of heat injuries,? Kavouras said. ?In a separate study, we found that this same small degree of dehydration makes arteries stiffer, an effect that has been observed following cigarette smoking.?
Performance Issues
A certified athletic trainer, McDermott focuses on exertional heat stroke and how hydration relates to aspects of heat illness. He is interested not just in how these issues affect athletes but how they affect people who work in physically strenuous jobs, such as construction or firefighting, who also must perform in extreme weather conditions.
?I love working with athletes who are motivated and driven people, but there are forgotten athletes I want to work with ? soldiers, firefighters, law enforcement officers,? McDermott said. ?All of these people have to deal with heat in the performance of their work. A lot of times the job they do can affect life and death.?
In?human performance laboratories such as the one at Arkansas, which Ganio directs, researchers use various scientific methods to study hydration status of the body, including measures of blood plasma volume, skin blood flow and sweat.
?For me, the challenge is that, you control as much as you can in a field setting, but extraneous variables come into play more than they will in a laboratory,? McDermott said. ?We also have to design studies that are feasible and don?t hinder what a coach is trying to achieve with a team.?
Some of his research at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga showed that symptoms of dehydration can be similar to those experienced by people with a concussion.
?You get a headache, you feel nausea and fatigue with both, we found,? McDermott said. ?Reaction time also was slowed when a person was dehydrated.?
He also plans to conduct future research about how heat affects sudden cardiac death.
?In the lab, it will be great to start to figure out the interplay between heat, hydration and cardiac stress,? he said.
Muscle Mass
Gray?s research focuses on physiological changes as people age. Specifically, she?s studying how muscular strength and muscular power relate to functional fitness in people over 70. She would like to come up with a measure of functional fitness for older adults that is easy to assess in the community.
?As we age, it is less important how much weight we can lift or how many repetitions we can do,? Gray said. ?The focus has been shifted away from physical fitness to functional fitness; it?s about having the strength to live independently and take care of themselves, she said.
She studies a condition called sarcopenia, which is age-related loss of muscle.
?Is sarcopenia actually caused by aging or is it lack of activity?? she asked. ?This question has yet to be answered adequately.?
Fort and Gray work together in the college?s Office for Studies on Aging, which Gray co-directs. The office submitted a grant proposal to the National Institutes of Health for funding to support research into functional fitness in elderly that focuses on high-velocity exercise, Fort said. If funded, the research would draw in elements of community, she said.
?We have proposed using people affiliated with a faith-based organization such as a church to see whether that affiliation enhances their ability to get the benefits of exercise,? Fort said.
Washington studies how skeletal muscle changes when subjected to different stimuli. He particularly wants to learn how muscle regenerates after it is damaged by overuse, injury or disease.
?I?m looking at what?s happening at the cell level, what genes are being turned on, what pathways are activated, what proteins are expressed,? said Washington, who is a molecular biologist. ?We know that inflammation plays a role. Many diseases are associated with low, chronic systemic inflammation that damages tissue. Inflammation sets the stage for the regeneration process, but when it lasts too long that?s when damage occurs.?
Body Heat
Ganio?s research centers on how the cardiovascular thermoregulatory system works in human beings.
?Together, the cardiovascular and thermoregulatory system allows you to continue working in extreme environments, like the heat,? he said. ?They serve an extremely important function in every human, but we don?t know a lot about how they specifically do their job.?
There?s very little research on thermoregulation in the older adult population that Gray studies.
?If we are going to prescribe exercise to older adults, especially when the temperature outside is in triple digits like it was this summer with 70 to 80 percent humidity, we have to bring them into our lab in a controlled environment to determine physiologically what is going on in their bodies,? she said.
Exercise Barriers
Ganio is also interested in learning why people don?t exercise to the degree they should and whether there are physiological barriers to blame. Fewer than half of adults meet the minimum exercise requirements set by the American College of Sports Medicine. This lack of exercise results in serious health problems such as obesity and diabetes. He has been doing studies about how body size influences body temperature response to exercising in high temperature environments.
?Does adipose fat impair blood flow and sweating in such a way that it affects our ability to exercise?? he asked. ?In the lab, we can detect sweating even before it is visible to the naked eye.?
Washington is also interested in how obesity affects the cellular processes he studies.
?Is an obese individual?s muscle growth impaired?? he asked. ?What?s going on there? What makes an obese person more prone to muscle damage? Is it some sort of cross-talk between fat and muscles??
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Source: http://coehp.uark.edu/colleague/11467.php
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