Post-exercise, passive heat acclimation with sauna or hot-water immersion provide comparable adaptations to performance in the heat in a military context

Abstract

To mitigate the effects of heat during operations in hot environments, military personnel will likely benefit from heat acclimation (HA) conducted prior to deployment. Using post-exercise, passive heating, 25 participants completed a 5 d HA regime in sauna (70 °C, 18% RH) or hot-water immersion (HWI) (40 °C) for ≤40 min, preceded and followed by a heat stress test (1-h walking at 5 km.h⁻¹ in 33 °C, 77% RH in military uniform (20 kg) before an incremental ramp to exhaustion). Fifteen completed both regimes in a randomised, cross-over manner. While performance did not significantly improve (+14%, [-1, 29], p = .079), beneficial adaptations were observed for mean exercising core temperature (-0.2 °C, [-0.2, −0.2], p <.001), skin temperature (-0.2 °C, [-0.2, −0.2], p = 035) and heart rate (-8 bpm, [-6, −10], p<.001) in both conditions. Post-exercise, passive HA of either modality may benefit military units operating in the heat.

Practitioner summary: Strategies are required to prevent health and performance impairments during military operations upon arrival in hot environments. Using a randomised, cross-over design, participants completed five-day passive, post-exercise heat acclimation using sauna or hot-water immersion. Both regimes elicited beneficial albeit modest heat adaptations.

Abbreviations: HA: heat acclimation; HST: heat stress test; HWI: hot-water immersion; RH: relative humidity

Keywords:

• Thermoregulation
• military
• acclimation
• heat
• physiology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data and materials can be requested through the corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by AUT under the Vice-Chancellors Doctoral Scholarship.