Evaluation of the Response to Hypoxia at Rest and During Exercise in a Healthy Subject After a Cryostimulation Exposure

Overview

Many information is available regarding human adaptations to cold or hypoxia. Adaptations to these environments and physical exercise constitute responses to physiological stress aimed at amplifying the organism's reactions and improving its performance. However, studies conducted so far to understand these adaptations and their underlying mechanisms have been organized in a dissociated manner, with each study focusing on only one of these specific situations (cold, hypoxia, or exercise). Understanding cross-adaptations is crucial, as human beings are often simultaneously exposed to several of these stimuli, and understanding this cross-exposure can be considered a prerequisite for pre-acclimatization strategies to these different environments. Cross-adaptations has been defined as follows: "It simply involves considering that long-term exposure (either continuous or intermittent) to a given unfavorable environment not only increases tolerance to that particular environment but also leads to gains or losses of tolerance to other unfavorable factors that the adapted organism had never encountered before." When specifically examining cross-adaptations to cold and hypoxia, only one study focusing on the human model is available. The lack of perspectives and positions regarding the results calls for further investigations. The main objective of this study is to assess the effect of repeated exposures to cryostimulation on the variation of the respiratory exchange ratio in hypoxia during exercise.

Conditions