By Tom Nordlie
GAINESVILLE, Fla. - Heat - it's one opponent that can humble the toughest football player, especially during summer practices and early season games. But researchers at the University of Florida's College of Medicine have found a way to turn the sidelines into a temporary oasis for sweltering gridiron gladiators, by designing shoulder pads that deliver one of the Sunshine State's favorite luxuries - air-conditioning.
In preliminary research, Jacksonville University players tried the pads and said the rush of chilly air around the chest, back and shoulders was refreshing, said Nikolaus Gravenstein, M.D., a UF professor and chairman of anesthesiology and the system's co-developer. College and professional teams around the nation have expressed interest in the system.
Further studies with players will help UF researchers better understand how much the system reduces heat stress and dehydration and improves the quality of play, he said. Similar products are in development for baseball umpires and NASCAR drivers, along with a heated version for cold climate football players.
"I can't tell you exactly how much heat the system eliminates, but I think every bit helps," said Gravenstein, a member of UF's McKnight Brain Institute. "This is a supplement to drinking adequate fluids and getting proper athletic conditioning."
Each year, about 400 Americans die from heat-related illnesses such as heat stroke, which occurs when the body's cooling system fails and body temperature rises to extreme levels that can damage the brain and other organs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Although football players are typically fit and strong, they play in conditions where field temperatures sometimes reach 120 degrees, especially during summer practices and early season games, Gravenstein said.
"It's very difficult to cool (football players) externally," he said. "Blowing on them with cold air or fans from the outside is made largely ineffective because of the insulation that is their uniform, because a uniform is foam, it's almost like being inside a Styrofoam cooler. It seemed reasonable (to ask) 'well, why not just blow cold air under the uniform?'"
The system includes a portable air compressor and a cooler/dryer unit that can be adjusted to cool air to as low as 60 degrees. The air is filtered, then pumped to a manifold constructed from pipes equipped with small air hoses that can be connected to the pads, said Fred Williams, president of Williams Sports Group in Jacksonville, Fla., and a longtime custom pad builder who holds an exclusive license from UF to market the technology.
The specially designed shoulder pads have a port built into the back so that when players come off the field a trainer or teammate can plug in a hose to circulate cold air through ventilation channels running up and down the interior of the pads, Williams said.
"The air blows through there at something in the neighborhood of eight cubic feet per minute and exchanges the air under the pads several hundred times a minute, so there is a noticeable breeze evident to the player," Gravenstein said.
This spring, UF researchers plan to continue field tests with the JU football team to determine how much the system helps reduce core body temperature, using pill-sized sensors players swallow before practice, said MaryBeth Horodyski, Ed.D., a UF associate professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation who is helping evaluate the system. Additional core body temperature studies will have players work out in an environmental chamber, a large room where variables such as temperature and humidity can be precisely controlled, she said.
Gravenstein conceived of the system in early 2002, and developed it in his spare time, initially working with UF premedical student Dasia Esener. Williams later offered his advice, as did UF's Sem Lampotang, Ph.D., an associate professor of anesthesiology, and Michael Gilmore, M.D., a resident in orthopaedics and rehabilitation.
When used as a supplement to other preventive strategies, the system could provide an advantage, said heat-stress expert Douglas Casa, Ph.D., the director of athletic training education at the University of Connecticut in Storrs and a 1993 UF alumnus who studied with Horodyski. Casa will provide an environmental chamber for Horodyski's research but does not expect to be otherwise involved in the UF project, he said.
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UF scientist recognized for innovations in brain injury
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By John Pastor
GAINESVILLE, Fla. - A neuroscientist at the Evelyn F. & William L. McKnight Brain Institute of the University of Florida will talk about cutting edge efforts to diagnose traumatic brain injuries at a gala gathering of the National Brain Injury Research, Treatment and Training Foundation in Charlotte, N.C., on Saturday, Jan. 31.
Ronald L. Hayes, Ph.D., director of the Center for Traumatic Brain Injury Studies at UF, will talk about his efforts to develop a blood test to assess the severity of head wounds on the battlefield. There search is supported by a $2.2 million grant from the U.S. Departmentof Defense, but the test will have many public health applications, from gauging brain damage incurred after a drug overdose to reassuring soccer moms who worry when their children receive a blow to the head in the heat of a match.
In addition to discussing research, Hayes will receive the Lance Award for his scientific achievements and his lifetime contributions to the well-being of persons with brain injuries, according to conference coordinators.
The Lance Award is named for Philip Lance Van Every Foil, adescendant of the founder of Lance snack foods. The family has a long-standing interest in furthering understanding and treatment of traumatic brain injuries. Traumatic brain injuries cost the country more than $48 billion a year, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and between 2.5 million and 6.5 million Americans alive today have had a traumatic brain injury.
"I would place Dr. Hayes among the top three traumatic brain injury researchers in the world," said Douglas Anderson, Ph.D., interim director of the McKnight Brain Institute. "He works very hard to
translate his basic science, laboratory findings to the clinic, which is something that a lot more spinal cord and TBI researchers should be doing. His program has a strong clinical component and a strong basic science component. He works very hard to build the infrastructure to translate what he learns in the lab to the clinic."
Previous Lance Award winners include John Jane, M.D., Ph.D., a professor and chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Virginia who received national recognition for the spinal operation he performed on actor Christopher Reeve, and Graham Teasdale, a professor and head of neurosurgery at the University of Glasgow since 1981.
"The diagnostic aspect of traumatic brain injury treatment isvery important," Hayes said. "It is imperative for sophisticated technology and science to move very quickly toward finding practical applications to help patients. I'm glad these efforts are providing some recognition to the McKnight Brain Institute."
The National Brain Injury Research, Treatment and Training Foundation is a national, not-for-profit foundation organized to provide support for research, treatment and training in brain injury through individual research grants, contracts and small business grants. The primary goal of the Foundation is to find a "cure" for brain injury.
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