Written by Luke Belval, PhD and Craig Crandall, PhD on December 07, 2020
Have you ever been told to be careful when exercising because of your burn injuries? Do you avoid outdoor activities because you are worried about overheating?
Researchers at the Thermal and Vascular Physiology Laboratory in the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine have been researching how burn survivors can safely exercise, especially when it is hot outside.
Phoenix members can help advance this research by participating in these studies; doing so will not only help you better understand how your body reacts to exercise, it will also help fellow burn survivors.
Read on for the latest information coming out of this laboratory, and for more on how you can become involved.
Both burn injuries and skin grafting can cause damage to sweat glands, the tiny parts of your skin that produce sweat to keep you cool. This means that burn survivors have more trouble keeping themselves cool, especially in hot and humid environments.
Dr. Craig Crandall, the director of the lab, has made it a personal mission to better understand how this impacts burn survivors’ health and safety.
Due to a variety of reasons, including concerns about overheating during exercise, burn survivors often have lower physical fitness. This leaves such individuals vulnerable to chronic health conditions like heart disease and diabetes.
With work funded by the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Crandall’s team researched how well burn survivors respond over the course of 6 months of strenuous exercise training. Burn survivors were brought into the lab to test how their muscles, heart, and lungs responded to exercise. They then repeated those tests six months after they were coached through an exercise program.
The results showed that burn survivors can benefit from physical activity, regardless of the extent of their injuries.
More recently, the lab has focused on evaluating the medical requirements for burn survivors serving in the United States military. Currently, individuals with burns on 18% or more of their body are excluded from serving or continuing to serve in the military. This is problematic, as the US military has nearly three times more severe burn injuries than a civilian population. Thus, even though there are limited scientific data to support exclusion, a severe burn injury could mean that a soldier can no longer serve.
The US Army funded the lab to study what causes a burn survivor to heat up during exercise, testing factors like level of difficulty or the location of burn injuries on the body. This research will help the Army craft guidelines that more accurately reflect the capabilities of burn survivors.
For example, this research found that a torso burn injury was no more detrimental to body temperature regulation than torso body armor on a non-burned soldier.
Now that researchers better understand how burn surviors respond to exercise, as well as the factors that cause survivors to heat up faster than those without burn injuries, the logical next question is:
What can we do about it?
With progressively more severe heat waves, it is increasingly difficult to find safe times or places to exercise, particularly in the summer months.
In partnership with Phoenix Society, the laboratory was recently awarded a grant by the National Institutes of Health to look at ways that burn survivors can keep cool during physical activity. Specifically, they are looking at approaches like spraying water or pointing a fan at survivors during physical activity.
This project will also develop a smart phone application. The app will inform a burn survivor how safe it is to participate in physical activity based on weather and the activity’s intensity.
Researchers at the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, affiliated with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, have assessed hundreds of burn survivors to quantify their risk for a heat-related injury. The culmination of that work is a burn survivor heat risk calculator that provides information on the risk of performing physical activity in a variety of environmental conditions based on each burn survivor’s unique characteristics. Their goal is for burn survivors to use this calculator as a tool to encourage physical activity while also warning the survivor if it is not safe for them to engage in that activity in the present environmental conditions.
Importantly, regardless of the recommendations from the calculator, a burn survivor should stop physical activity and seek cooler conditions if they feel overheated or unwell.
Disclaimer: The medical information provided on this website is intended for general informational purposes only and should not be considered a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Medical knowledge is continually evolving, and recommendations may change over time. Content shared by subject matter experts reflects their expertise and experience at the time of publication and may not be applicable to all individuals. Always seek the guidance of your physician or another qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have about a medical condition. The views expressed by individual contributors do not necessarily reflect those of Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors.