Since weeks I wanted to write a scientific outline about this subject. My searches have been frustrating, the papers I finally retrieved are not very concise reflecting a situation of not-knowing a lot.
The studies available look at the various parameters we usually measure, if we design a study in sports and experience science. I just want to list some of them here: maximal oxygen uptake, resting and maximal heart rate, blood pressure, cardiac output and other cardiac functions, erythropoiesis, hemolysis, energy expenditure and balance, blood ammonia, muscle glykogen, creatine kinase, cortisol, testosterone, catecholamines, different ratios, cytokines, growth factors, immune parameters, sleep patterns, mood scores and many more. Each study picks another focus, but the whole picture is missing.

Sports are dominated by all kinds of machinery that measure body parameters to improve and control performance. More and more devices are construed to give more and more detailed information about our body's condition. Nevertheless body sense is a term that in the end always comes into the game if parameters are not conclusive, and in many ways they are not. I found an article in the Psychology Today Blog that underlines the importance of the body sense and the ability to assess the condition of well-being.

Currently Ross Tucker is writing about this topic on the Science of Sport blog. I want to pick up this topic very briefly, because as we know even among lean athletes weight is a crucial issue of discussion all the year through. The gossip around training your metabolism to burn more fat is fairly noisy, controversial and not very profoundly based on evidence. This has got to do with the fact that reliably measuring parameters of energy consumption and moreover to measure the kind of energy used is not trivial.

Currently biestmilch is supporting a weight loss program of two of its friends. My view on this topic was from the beginning that the guys should not focus on weight loss only, should not put the scale into the center of concern as other health aspects may be even more important and significant, as there are blood pressure, aerobic capacity and resting heart rate. Today I found confirmation in the current issue of the British Journal of Medicine. Dr. N. King and his co-workers from the Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, School of Human Movement Studies, Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia published a study that underlines the approach that weight loss is not the one and only health benefit of exercise. Their study group of 58 overweight sedentary individuals undertook the effort of physical workouts 5 times a week for 12 weeks. Energy expenditure was 500 kcal per session. It is interesting and important to know that weight loss was less than expected for the majority of the participants. But they showed other positive changes which are of great significance for the health condition of an individual.

Recently, I have been training with my personal coach as I do twice every week, and it came that we were discussing the topic of symmetry. I enjoy this luxury of having a coach since I am suffering from pains in my foot that I cannot not control anymore. The pain keeps me away from running which really influences my mood negatively ;-)... sorry, I am zoning out! Analyzing my body we found out that over decades I have developed a kind of a patchwork of asymmetry that disturbs economic and efficient movements. Compensatory actions and postures added up. The result is a mess that is extremely difficult to tackle.  Symmetry, so my hypothesis, is an ideal state of a biological organism that facilitates optimal functionality, and is rarely achieved or never, as it would mean complete perfection. Today I found a talk by Marcus du Sautoy about symmetry that just fits into my current deliberations. Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy (born in London, 26 August 1965) is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. His academic work concerns mainly group theory and number theory.

This post refers back to the one from yesterday that outlines the scientific approach to proove a cause by a »post-hoc assumption of a cause-effect relation«. Conclusions drawn like this are fairly arbitrary and result in data that drift and seem incorrect as soon as the standpoint of observation changes. Under whatsoever extreme environmental conditions heat stroke is a rare event that funnily enough occurs under conditions that would never let us assume it to happen. The proof of concept is easily performed by a mathematical equation that should not be applied to real life, to real persons, because of its over-simplification. But mathematics clearly shows that heat loss even in extreme situations like hot temperature over 35°C, no wind, high humidity, bright sunshine and low running efficiency exceeds heat storage. The example: Theoretically this runner cannot experience a heat stroke, no, he is even able to evaporate more heat. To keep his body temperature exactly the same, he would have to evaporate 1.5 L of sweat per hour. The calculation also reveals that it would be possible for him to evaporate 1.6 L of sweat per hour. This means that he has no problem loosing the heat he produces, and should not develop heatstroke But the story of real life turns out to be completely different: This runner, running in these conditions, was pulled out of the race after only 16 minutes, with a rectal temperature of 40.8°C! Therefore, despite the fact that there were no limitations in the environment, and the fact that he COULD have lost all the heat he produced, he failed. And the result was that he developed heat stroke after less than 4km of running! Read whole article on www.sportsscientists.com