Conference in Italy in November

It is always a pleasure and a surprise to be invited in Italy to speak at a conference. I left Italy many years ago to pursue a career in sports science and research and being invited back home to speak to coaches and sports scientists is always a proud moment and an opportunity to speak my first language again for few days.

The invitation this time has come from the Italian Athletics Federation and CONI for a conference called “Atleticamente”. I have been invited to present in a special session to celebrate my PhD supevisor and mentor Professor Carmelo Bosco. I am very happy about the invitation to this conference and proud also because Bosco’s supervisor, Professor Paavo Komi will be there.

Over the course of my career both Paavo and Carmelo had a great influence. I was always hoping to become as good as they are and have been and to this day they are still a source of inspiration and I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to meet them and spend time with them.

I will talk about my work with Prof. Bosco from the Lab to the field as well as my own research work on the present and the future of sports science in the applied setting.

The conference will be a great opportunity also to learn more about other sporting systems and catch up with colleagues and friends few months before London Olympics.

Good calories, bad calories and weight gain/loss

Time goes fast and I realized the blog has been abandoned for quite a while. I have been reading recently a little bit about weight loss, mainly to update my knowledge, and also for some personal interest, having suffered a broken rib and now trying to recover some shape!

My interest was initially on rapid weight loss. So I wend back to read some old papers on rapid weight loss and performance (e.g. Fogelholm et al., 1993 ) which showed for example that 6.0 +/- 0.6% of body weight was lost in 2.4 days by fluid and diet restriction and forced sweating, and when followed by a 5-h "loading" (food and drinks ad libitum) there was no change in performance with a gradual weight loss programme. However while in experienced athletes such approach might still not produce visible and measurable reductions in physical performance, it seems clear that psychologically they are highly likely to suffer (see Hall and Lane, 2001) as well as having some impairment in cognitive function (see Choma et al., 1998).

However, while looking for some literature on dietary aspects of weight loss I came across some interesting information.

First, two interesting books I just ordered: Good Calories-Bad calories  and Why we get fat from Gary Taubes which quite rightly points the finger to carbohydrates and their abundant use as the main cause of obesity. I will read the books and then write a review, as while I am keen to read his summary of the carbohydrate issue, I am not so convinced about his views of the role of exercise on weight management. What pointed me in that direction was a great letter written by Professor Tim Noakes on the British Medical Journal’s blog. As usual Tim has written some interesting comments. Have a look at it and make your mind up!

The internet is always full of surprises and while looking for information I have been impressed by the project of a personal trainer who decided to gain weight before losing it again to learn how it feels to be overweight and then to show how his methods work in getting himself back in shape. He started in May his weight gain plan and is due to start the reverse process in November. If you are curious about it, go read his blog here.

Book now on the Itunes Bookstore

Big surprise today, I found out the book I edited with my colleagues Rob Newton and Ken Nosaka is also on the Itunes Bookstore.

So, if you want the ebook edition, it sounds like you can now buy such format.

Epidermal Electronics

I have been recently reading a lot about epidermal electronics. Pretty soon patients in hospitals (and sports people) should be able to wear skin mounted electrodes to be able to measure a variety of physiological indicators in real time for a prolonged period of time.

The latest innovation comes from the University of Illinois. A new device looking like a tattoo, has been developed and proposed as an innovative smart skin solution. Researchers at the University of Illinois who came up with this device made circuits with a wide array of components, to prove it could work: sensors, LEDs, transistors, radio frequency capacitors and wireless antennas. The devices can draw power from induction or even from mini solar cells!

Inventors say they could be used for various medical applications, especially sensors that monitor heart and muscle activity, which currently require conductive gels and/or relatively bulky equipment. To prove it, they measured electrical activity produced by the heart, brain, and skeletal muscles, some data are reported in Science.

You can also see a video of the technology below. Pretty impressive technology which will be hopefully available soon!

This is impressive technology, pushing the boundaries of wearable sensors and providing incredible possibilities for studying human movement.

(Example of a sensor setup for EEG and other measurements. Photo courtesy of Prof. John Rogers)

(Easy removal of the skin mounted electrode. Photo courtesy of Prof. John Rogers)

You can learn more about this and other technologies developed by Professor Rogers’ group here.

Muscle oxygenation in-vivo

Our paper on the possibility of using Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) to measure muscle oxygenation in-vivo in elite athletes has now been published ahead of print by Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise.

This study is the first of a series of studies constituting the PhD studentship funded by the BOA to study the possibility of using NIRS in the field as a tool to understand performance demands and adaptations to training as well as developing innovative portable integrated brain and muscle devices. The research programme is a collaboration between ourselves, the University of Essex with Professor Chris Cooper and Professor Clare Elwell at University College London.

The main author of this work is Catherine Hesford and you can find more info and contact details here.

More work will be published in the next months and I will write more about this fascinating technique soon on this blog.

The abstracts is available below.

Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2011 Sep 3. [Epub ahead of print]

Asymmetry of Quadriceps Muscle Oxygenation During Elite Short-Track Speed Skating.

Hesford CM, Laing S, Cardinale M, Cooper CE.

Source

1 Department of Biological Sciences, University of Essex, UK; 2 British Olympic Medical Institute, University College London, UK; 3 University of Aberdeen, School of Medical Sciences, Aberdeen, Scotland (UK), 4 School of Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences, Bangor University, UK.

Abstract

PURPOSE:

It has been suggested that due to the low sitting position in short track speed skating, muscle blood flow is restricted, leading to decreases in tissue oxygenation. Therefore wearable wireless-enabled Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) technology was used to monitor changes in quadriceps muscle blood volume and oxygenation during 500m race simulation in short-track speed skaters.

METHODS:

6 elite skaters, all of Olympic standard (age = 23 ± 1.8 years, height 1.8 ± 0.1m, mass = 80.1 ± 5.7kg, mid-thigh skin fold thickness = 6.8 ± 2.2mm) were studied. Subjects completed a 500m race simulation time trial (TT). Whole body oxygen consumption was simultaneously measured with muscle oxygenation in right and left vastus lateralis as measured by NIRS.

RESULTS:

Mean time for race completion was 44.8 ± 0.4 s. VO peaked 20 s into the race. In contrast, muscle tissue oxygen saturation (TSI %) decreased, and plateaued after 8s. Linear regression analysis showed that right leg TSI% remained constant throughout the rest of the TT (slope value = 0.01), whereas left leg TSI% increased steadily (slope value = 0.16), leading to a significant asymmetry (p<0.05) in the final lap. Total muscle blood volume decreased equally in both legs at the start of the simulation. However, during the course of subsequent laps there was a strong asymmetry during cornering; when skaters travelled solely on the right leg there was a decrease in its muscle blood volume whereas an increase was seen in the left leg.

CONCLUSION:

NIRS was shown to be a viable tool for wireless monitoring of muscle oxygenation. The asymmetry in muscle desaturation observed on the two legs in short-track speed skating has implications for training and performance.

Free reference manager and PDF organiser

I have not had much time to write on the Blog recently. London Olympics are approaching fast and there are too many things to do and too little time!

Anyway, I will write a short article to praise a recent addition to my software tools. Of course this is another freeware. All of us continuously struggle to organise all the PDFs of the scientific articles we read and also make sure we can site while we write articles. Commercial software packages are of course available, however I came across a great freeware solution: Mendeley. If you want to look at a short video to explain how it works, have a look at this video:

http://vimeo.com/user5499963/what-is-mendeley

I have downloaded and used the software for few days now, and it has been very easy to create specific folders and import PDF files arranging my references by topics.

The folder syncs with server space, so it is possible to keep all the documents and libraries if your computer crashes or if you lose it, as well as push the content to other devices.

It is also possible to annotate, highlight and share comments with others.

 

Also, it is possible to create shared libraries so everyone can add and share comments as well as share the PDF contents. Finally, it is possible to create an online group to share knowledge on a particular area.

A great tool for anyone to use. The free version provides 500MB of space free and 500MB to be shared as well as the possibility to have 5 private groups ad 10 users. More space and more options are available for reasonable fees.

Curious? Download the software and find out more about Mendeley here:

Free online issue of Biomedical Basis of Elite Performance

In anticipation of the London 2012 Olympics and as a build-up to the opening of registration for The Biomedical Basis of Elite Performance Meeting, The Journal of Physiology and Experimental Physiology have just launched a free online issue on The Biomedical Basis of Elite Performance.




Experimental Physiology: http://ep.physoc.org/site/misc/virtualissue.xhtml
The Journal of Physiology: http://jp.physoc.org/site/misc/virtualissue.xhtml

Papers selected for this special online issue draw attention to exercise and training as extreme physiological variants. A considerable breadth of physiology is covered, including genes and human performance, the regulation of muscle protein and collagen turnover, tendon responses to exercise, fatigue (local and central), age and sex differences in response to training, vasodilator function, oxygen transport and oxygen demand, motor drive and motor unit recruitment, respiratory fatigue and mitochondrial and fuel metabolism.

Papers were selected by Paul Greenhaff (JP) and Michael White (EP).