Increasing age is a major risk factor for susceptibility to heat stress during physical activity

Abstract

We evaluated the extent to which age, cardiorespiratory fitness, and body fat can independently determine wholebody heat loss (WBHL) in 87 otherwise healthy adults. We show that increasing age is a major predictor for decreasing WBHL in otherwise healthy adults (aged 20-70 years), accounting for 40% of the variation in the largest study to date. While greater body fat also had a minor detrimental impact on WBHL, there was no significant role for cardiorespiratory fitness. © 2017, Canadian Science Publishing. All rights reserved.