1. Heat stress during acute exercise exerts profound effects on the cardiovascular system.

In detail, explain these cardiovascular effects (3 pts), and how skin blood flow (3 pts) and
sweating (3 pts) contribute to acute exercise heat stress in an unacclimatized athlete.


During acute exercise, heat stress primarily affects cardiovascular system by increasing
the body temperature beyond the normal range. This results to blood flowing towards the skin
periphery or venous bed to dissipate excess amount of heat. The blood vessels particularly in
such part of the body engorge to adapt the influx of blood while allowing heat lost in form of
sweating. On the other side of the story, the working muscles and vital organs need the blood too
for their oxygen supply. Hence these two conflict each other from a limited cardiac output.
If exposed for a long time (in acute exercise), the cardiovascular system can be severely
affected from covering two important mechanisms to keep going- blood supply towards the skin
to lose heat and towards the muscles to supply oxygen. This can result to cardiovascular strain
due to low cardiac output accompanied by dehydration and hyperthermia.
In cases that there is abrupt change in the external environment or say in a case of
unacclimatized athlete, the mechanism of losing heat can rather contribute to heat stress instead
of being the means to get rid of it. This case is coined as stated above are dehydration and
hyperthermia. Dehydration results from too much lose of body fluids without replenishing it,
while hyperthermia occurs when body produces more heat than it can dissipate. Since in the
tendencies, skin blood flow and sweating, of our body to maintain thermoregulatory function in
all its might, these have then to rather offset the strict cardiovascular control in the over-all
homeostasis and thus compromise the system to further heat stress.
* Although the first part of the question should be removed as per instructed. The original answer still fits
to the over-all thought of the second question. For clarity, I did not change my answer but rather add
more information to keep the answer straightforward.
2. Explain the mechanisms responsible for hypervolemia due to exercise training in the
heat (4 pts). How does plasma volume expansion improve exercise performance in the
heat? (4 pts).
When undergoing exercise training, usually our total body fluid increases
correspondingly in order to balance the increase of heat. This mechanism will lead to the buildup
of too much blood plasma which counters to an increase of over-all blood volume. This could be
very important when doing heat exercises since more fluid means easier dissipation of heat and
larger blood volume triggers reduction of cardiovascular strains. Thus increasing our the
endurance and longevity in exercise performance.