WEBINAR SERIES—Integrative Physiological Responses to Exercise-induced Heat Stress: Sex as a Biological Variable

September 7, 2023
11 a.m. EDT

Register to watch on-demand

This webinar summarizes the integrative physiology of responses to exercise-induced heat stress and discusses implications for athletes and the military.

Key topics include:

• The autonomic nervous system is an important integrator of responses to regulate body temperature and blood pressure in humans.
• In women, reproductive hormones (estradiol and progesterone) can alter thermoregulatory and cardiovascular responses during exercise-induced heat stress.
• Differences between men’s and women’s thermoregulation in the heat do not appear to result in differences between the sexes in risk of heat illness, particularly in a military context.

Speaker

Nisha Charkoudian, PhD
Division Chief, Thermal & Mountain Medicine Division, US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine

Nisha Charkoudian, PhD, earned her PhD in cardiovascular physiology from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. She completed postdoctoral training at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and joined the Mayo Clinic faculty in the Department of Physiology & Biomedical Engineering. Charkoudian later joined the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, Massachusetts, as a research physiologist, where she is currently chief of the Thermal & Mountain Division. Her main areas of research focus are the integrative physiological responses to environmental extremes of heat and high altitude, including sex differences and influences of female reproductive hormones on these processes. Charkoudian has evaluated the influences of heat, exercise and hydration on sympathetic neural responses, cardiovascular regulation and exercise performance.