Differential scanning calorimetry reveals that whole-body cryostimulation in cross-country skiers can modify their response to physical effort

Abstract

In sport medicine, cryostimulation is used to help athletes to better support the training workload, to prevent the deleterious effects of strenuous exercise and to improve recovery. In this study, eight elite crosscountry skiers had two experimental exercise sessions differing in that the second one was carried out after a series of 10 whole-body cryostimulation (WBC) treatments. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was applied to compare changes in athlete's blood serum during both sessions. Mean DSC curves of serum collected in four stages of the training session: before exercise, after exercise, at 1 h recovery and after 24 h of rest have shown a similar nature of post-exercise changes and recovery regardless of the WBC. Statistically significant effect of the exercise, reflected in some parameters of serum denaturation transition, has been found. Too small number of participants in our study did not allow to verify the hypothesis that WBC favorably modifies athletes' reaction to the effort and improves post-exercise recovery, but such trends emerged.

Modification of blood serum DSC profiles by sauna treatments in cross-country skiers during the exercise cycle

“…The thermal denaturation of the proteins contained in the blood sera is observed in serum DSC profile as complex endothermic transition. At first sight, at least two or three peaks can be distinguished in this transition for healthy people, depending on the serum proteome and the solvent used [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. Mean DSC curves of aqueous solutions of human blood sera samples collected from participants of our study at three time points (before sauna treatments, after 1 sauna treatment and after 10 sauna treatments) are shown in Fig.…”

“…EET test consists of ~ 60 min running with the intensity below the individual anaerobic threshold, on treadmill H/P/Cosmos Pulsar at 20 ± 1 °C ambient temperature, 56 ± 3% relative humidity and 985 ± 5 hPa atmospheric pressure, in Research Center for Sports, Academy of Physical Education in Katowice. More details can be found in our recently published paper [32].…”

“…Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) has found wide application in medical and biological sciences [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. Attempts to use the DSC method for clinical purposes have been made for several years [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27].…”

“…DSC profiles of blood serum, plasma, synovial fluid, cerebrospinal fluid are very useful because they can be a valuable source of information about alterations in these physiological fluids caused by different diseases or treatments. DSC seems to be a very informative technique also in sports medicine [28][29][30][31][32].…”

Comparison of human blood serum DSC profiles in aqueous and PBS buffer solutions

“…However, it seems worth experimenting at the research stage. Thus, our earlier DSC studies of athletes' sera [22,23,25,26], aimed at supporting sports training, were performed using distilled water as the solvent.…”