PHYSIOLOGICAL ISSUES OF EXERTION IN ATHLETES

APPLIED EXERCISE PHYSIOLOGY

PHYSIOLOGICAL ISSUES OF EXERTION IN ATHLETES

Derevenco P
Romanian Academy of Medical Sciences-Branch of Cluj, Romania

This review has a double aim: to report the main trends of applied physiology in sport and to summarize the research performed by our team in this topic. In the first part of the review are outlined the prevailing areas (mechanisms, oxidative stress, genetic factors, doping, etc.) and its methods (cerebral imagery, Holter, telemetry, hormonal and electrophysiological procedures, inventories and questionnaires) specific cardiovascular and endocrine stress-syndromes and elements of psychosomatics, sudden cardiac death (from its causes to prevention) among young athletes, pathophysiological psychoneuroendocrine and systemic consequences of doping, relationship between acute or chronic stress and cardiac pathology, strategies to prevent and manage sport-related psychosocial and environmental factors (identification, increase of organism's resistance, psychotherapy and medication, stress inoculation).The second section mentions briefly our researches made from the 60th till present-day (4 books and over 30 articles). The experimental works belonged to vascular changes in the endocrine organs and to the cardiovascular reactions in exercise, studied on rats, to pharmacological effects on exercise and to ACTH blood level in exerting dogs and to exercise performance in 6-hydroxidopamine sympatectomized rats. As concerns human subjects the paper reports the cardiovascular and metabolic adaptation to exercise and to pharmacological stress, the ACTH blood levels on untrained, trained and over trained persons, the exercise performance in divers in a hyperbaric environment, the physiological characteristics of overtraining, the blood levels of  electrolytes and hormones and specific features of exercise stress and some peculiarities of psychosomatics related morbidity in athletes and frequency of streptococci infection of the upper respiratory tract among elite sportsmen. Last but not least a prediction till 2010 of some top athletic performances (WR) is proposed. In conclusion the leading role of physiological research for the sport science is underlined.