Exercise Training
- Aerobic exercise benefits human health, particularly cardiovascular health.
- Aerobic fitness can be assessed by measuring aerobic capacity - the ability of the body to take up and use oxygen during exercise.
Exercise Training and Autonomic Control
- Long-duration aerobic exercise training increases parasympathetic cardiovascular control, but the effects of short-duration exercise training are less well-known.
- Increased parasympathetic control reduces the risk of life-threatening arrhythmias in otherwise healthy individuals, as well as decreases mortality in post-myocardial infarction patients.
- Parasympathetic control is, therefore, cardioprotective, and used as a direct index of the health of the heart.
- Long-duration endurance training reduces resting sympathetic control of the heart. This reduction alters the heart?s autonomic balance in favor of parasympathetic dominance.
- Experimental findings on aerobic training-associated changes in baroreflex control have been inconsistent.
- Increased baroreflex sensitivity protects against potentially life-threatening arrhythmias.
Athletes and Orthostatic Tolerance
- Highly trained athletes have a lower orthostatic tolerance (resistance to fainting when standing-up) than non-athletes.
- Many studies have been performed observing the effects of endurance exercise on aerobic capacity, autonomic regulation of the heart, baroreflex function, orthostatic tolerance, and the overall health of the heart. However, little research has used training programs as short as 4 weeks, and the results of these studies have been mostly inconclusive.
- The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of a moderate-intensity, 4-week endurance-training program on the autonomic regulation of cardiovascular function and orthostatic tolerance in healthy, young, sedentary males. We hypothesized that 4 weeks of moderate aerobic training would:
1) Increase aerobic capacity (VO2max)
2) Decrease submaximal heart rates at a given workload
3) Increase vagal cardiac control
4) Decrease muscle sympathetic nervous activity
5) Decrease arterial baroreceptor responsivenes
6) Decrease orthostatic tolerance
| UROP | Students | Employment | PAB | BMES | Links | Contact Us |
| Michigan Tech Homepage |
Last modified 13 November 2000
Mail comments and/or questions concerning this site to the Webmaster
Mail questions concerning Biomedical Engineering at Michigan Tech to biomed@mtu.edu