Hello everyone, Kevin Don, the Get Fit Guy here.

This past week I was reading about something super interesting, which is the effect of localized thermal cooling on performance.

Therefore, I thought, I give everyone a break from the philosophy and talk about

fitness this week. Aren't you the lucky ones? So, first of all, before we discuss the effects

of localized cooling, let's discuss global heating. And by this, I mean global as it applies to

a whole organism, not to the planet. So what are the negative

effects on performance of an organism just being too hot? So our exercise capacity depends upon

the ability of your body to dissipate heat and to maintain blood flow to the muscles that are being used during exercise.

As the effort of an exercise increases, so does your blood pressure.

And this decreases blood plasma volume.

When we begin to overheat, either via overexertion or by exercising in a really hot

environment, then blood plasma volume decreases even faster because we are sweating and

therefore losing body fluids. This means that during overheating, there may simply just be insufficient blood flow to adequately

dissipate heat and to supply the working muscles. So eventually this means that you will succumb to

thermal distress. Thermal distress includes things like dehydration or loss of body fluid, cramping, which is involuntary spasms of the skeletal muscle.

Heat exhaustion or weakness, which is caused by the inability of your circulation to compensate for the dilation of blood vessels in the skin.

We can also see fainting and heat stroke, which is the failure of your hypothalamus, to regulate temperature in your system as a whole.

All of these issues can in fact just combine into one big blur,

resulting in failure to perform as your temperature rises.

And cutting out your ability to keep going is really only thing that your body could do in this

situation to avoid any lasting damage and ultimately potentially your survival.

However, those of us who play sports want to prolong

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