Louis Langdown
Senior Lecturer in Sports Performance Analysis
Louis Langdown is Senior Lecturer in Sports Performance Analysis.
Tess Flood
Research Assistant – Occupational Performance Research Group
About
Tess Flood is a research fellow with the Occupational Performance Research Group at the University of Chichester. Tess recently completed her MSc in Applied Sport and Exercise Physiology looking at the Effects of an L (-) Menthol on exercise at a Fixed-RPE in the heat.
Tess has experience as an applied practitioner in sport science and has assisted the GB Rowing START Talent ID program for the last two years and volunteered in the #DiscoverYourGold nationwide Talent ID program. During her MSc Tess worked for St Mary’s Clinic and undertook placements with GB Rowing Sport Science Team.
Professional
Education
2014-2016 – MSc Applied Sport and Exercise Physiology, St Mary’s University
2011-2014 – BSc Sport and Exercise Science, University of Brighton
Memberships
British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences (BASES)
Research
Research Interests
Tess has research interests in the following areas:
- Thermoregulation
- Perception of Exercise
- Non-thermal cooling interventions
PhD Study
Project Title
The development of a human model of heat exhaustion to test the reliability and variability of exertional heat illness biomarkers
Supervisory Team
Dr Sam Blacker (Director of Studies), Prof Stephen Myers, Dr Ben Lee (Coventry University), Dr Ella Walker (DSTL)
Project Summary
My PhD is in environmental and exercise physiology, researching the variability in systemic biomarkers of exertional heat illness (EHI; gastrointestinal, inflammatory and kidney injury).
Many individuals in physically demanding occupations are exposed to heat stress, which increases the risk of exertional heat illnesses.
Typically, interventions attempting to reduce the risk of exertional heat illness use one or two systemic biomarkers to measure the reduction in risk.
However, little is known about the inter and intra variability of these biomarkers and how the biomarkers respond to heat stress across a larger population.
In my first study, I combined environmental physiology and biochemistry to test a range of protocols to create a model of heat exhaustion.
Our model links together different pathways of EHI including gastrointestinal damage, inflammatory cytokines and acute kidney injury markers.
In my later studies, I will test this model across a large population of men (and later women) to assess the variation in the biomarkers.
This will help inform the use of these biomarkers to assess exertional heat illness risk.
