Heat adaptation in military personnel: mitigating risk, maximizing performance
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Published version
Author(s)
Parsons, Iain
Stacey, Michael
Woods, David
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The study of heat adaptation in military personnel offers generalizableinsights into a variety of sporting, recreational and occupational populations. Conversely, certain characteristics of military employment have few parallels in civilian life, such as the imperative to achieve mission objectives during deployed operations, the opportunity to undergo training and selection for elite units or the requirement to fulfil essential duties under prolonged thermal stress. In such settings, achieving peak individual performance can be critical to organizationalsuccess. Short-notice deployment to a hot operational or training environment, exposure to high intensity exercise and undertaking ceremonial duties during extreme weather may challenge the ability to protect personnel from excessive thermal strain, especially where heat adaptation is incomplete. Graded and progressive acclimatizationcan reduce morbidity substantially and impact on mortality rates, yet individual variation in adaptation has the potential to undermine empirical approaches. Incapacity under heat stress can present the military with medical, occupational and logistic challenges requiring dynamic risk stratification during initial and subsequent heat stress. Using data from large studies of military personnel observing traditional and more contemporary acclimatizationpractices, this review article (1) characterizesthe physical challenges that military training and deployed operations present (2) considers how heat adaptation has been used to augment military performance under thermal stress and (3) identifies potential solutions to optimizethe risk-performance paradigm, including those with broader relevance to other populations exposed to heat stress
Date Issued
2019-12
Date Acceptance
2019-11-21
Citation
Frontiers in Physiology, 2019, 10, pp.1-16
ISSN
1664-042X
Publisher
Frontiers Media
Start Page
1
End Page
16
Journal / Book Title
Frontiers in Physiology
Volume
10
Copyright Statement
© 2019 Parsons, Stacey and Woods. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Identifier
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.01485/full
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Physiology
heat acclimation
heat acclimatization
heat adaptation
heat stroke
heat syncope
heat illness
heat stress
SYMPATHETIC-NERVE ACTIVITY
INDUCED GASTROINTESTINAL PERMEABILITY
BOVINE COLOSTRUM SUPPLEMENTATION
ORAL GLUTAMINE SUPPLEMENTATION
BODY NEGATIVE-PRESSURE
HUMAN-SKIN WETTEDNESS
ORTHOSTATIC TOLERANCE
PHYSIOLOGICAL STRAIN
EXERCISE PERFORMANCE
BLOOD-PRESSURE
heat acclimation
heat acclimatization
heat adaptation
heat illness
heat stress
heat stroke
heat syncope
0606 Physiology
1116 Medical Physiology
1701 Psychology
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
1485
Date Publish Online
2019-12-17