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Throughout my career, my research has focused on identifying the hormonal, neural, or metabolic factors that are responsible for changes in the cardiovascular system during exposure to environmental and physical stresses.
I believe we learn much more about the cardiovascular system when we challenge it. Just sitting around, we won’t know what it is capable of doing. Push it with a stress such as exercise or altitude,
and we get to see how robust a system it is, we gain insight into what can go wrong, and we can catch a glimpse of what disease is all about. While research from my lab
varies from year to year, this is the common theme.
Here's a snapshot of the
current work:
Exercise has beneficial effects on cardiovascular health that go
beyond what can be explained by the improvement of traditional
risk factors. The studies we are currently conducting are designed to
understand the mechanisms that underlie some of these beneficial
effects of exercise, particularly in an aged population. These
studies may provide information that is pertinent to the use of
exercise in the prevention and treatment of peripheral artery
disease, endothelial dysfunction, high blood pressure and other
cardiovascular diseases, and set the stage for new vascular
health interventions targeted at older individuals. I believe
they will provide scientific knowledge that should improve the
health and well-being of many individuals. |
