Heat Adaptation in Military Personnel : Mitigating Risk, Maximizing Performance

© Copyright © 2019 Parsons, Stacey and Woods. The study of heat adaptation in military personnel offers generalizable insights 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 fulfill essential duties under prolonged thermal stress. In such settings, achieving peak individual performance can be critical to organizational success. 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 acclimatization can 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 acclimatization practices, this review article (1) characterizes the 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 optimize the risk-performance paradigm, including those with broader relevance to other populations exposed to heat stress

A systematic review and meta-analysis of carbohydrate benefits associated with randomized controlled competition-based performance trials

BACKGROUND: Carbohydrate supplements are widely used by athletes as an ergogenic aid before and during sports events. The present systematic review and meta-analysis aimed at synthesizing all available data from randomized controlled trials performed under real-life conditions. METHODS: MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials were searched systematically up to February 2015. Study groups were categorized according to test mode and type of performance measurement. Subgroup analyses were done with reference to exercise duration and range of carbohydrate concentration. Random effects and fixed effect meta-analyses were performed using the Software package by the Cochrane Collaboration Review Manager 5.3. RESULTS: Twenty-four randomized controlled trials met the objectives and were included in the present systematic review, 16 of which provided data for meta-analyses. Carbohydrate supplementations were associated with a significantly shorter exercise time in groups performing submaximal exercise followed by a time trial [mean difference -0.9 min (95 % confidence interval -1.7, -0.2), p = 0.02] as compared to controls. Subgroup analysis showed that improvements were specific for studies administering a concentration of carbohydrates between 6 and 8 % [mean difference -1.0 min (95 % confidence interval -1.9, -0.0), p = 0.04]. Concerning groups with submaximal exercise followed by a time trial measuring power accomplished within a fixed time or distance, mean power output was significantly higher following carbohydrate load (mean difference 20.2 W (95 % confidence interval 9.0, 31.5), p = 0.0004]. Likewise, mean power output was significantly increased following carbohydrate intervention in groups with time trial measuring power within a fixed time or distance (mean difference 8.1 W (95 % confidence interval 0.5, 15.7) p = 0.04]. CONCLUSION: Due to the limitations of this systematic review, results can only be applied to a subset of athletes (trained male cyclists). For those, we could observe a potential ergogenic benefit of carbohydrate supplementation especially in a concentration range between 6 and 8 % when exercising longer than 90 min

Additional file 3: Figure S3. of A systematic review and meta-analysis of carbohydrate benefits associated with randomized controlled competition-based performance trials

Effects of carbohydrate interventions as compared to placebo on mean power output. Forest plot shows pooled standardized mean differences with 95 % confidence intervals (CI) for 5 randomized controlled trials. Subgroup analyses show the results for carbohydrate concentrations ranging between 6–8 % and 12–18 %, respectively. The diamond at the bottom of the graph and the subgroups represents the pooled mean difference with the 95 % CI for all trials following fixed effect meta-analyses. GLU = glucose; FRU = fructose. (TIF 7339 kb

Additional file 1: Figure S1. of A systematic review and meta-analysis of carbohydrate benefits associated with randomized controlled competition-based performance trials

Effects of carbohydrate interventions as compared to placebo on time required to finish a time trial. Forest plot shows pooled standardized mean differences with 95 % confidence intervals (CI) for 6 randomized controlled trials. Subgroup analyses show the results for carbohydrate concentrations ranging between 6–8 % and 10–12 %, respectively. The diamond at the bottom of the graph and the subgroups represents the pooled mean difference with the 95 % CI for all trials following fixed effect meta-analyses. GLU = glucose; FRU = fructose; MAL = maltodextrin; SUC = sucrose. Title: File format: tiff (TIF 7950 kb

Teilhabe durch historische Kompetenzen. Die KLUG-Konzeption einer evidenzbasierten Lehrkräftebildung für inklusiven Geschichtsunterricht

Das Verbundprojekt „Inklusiv Geschichte lehren (KLUG)“ hat es sich zur Aufgabe gemacht, die Implementation inklusiver Bildung durch eine theoretisch fundierte Qualifizierung von Geschichtslehrkräften zu unterstützen. In diesem Aufsatz werden die ersten Analysen bezüglich der Wirksamkeit der Fortbildung im Bereich der Inklusion vorgestellt