Responses of Healthy Young and Older Adults to Short-Term Passive Heat Acclimation

Abstract

Context: Aging is accompanied by a reduced capacity to dissipate heat. Heat acclimation has been shown to improve heat loss capacity in young healthy adults, yet few studies have investigated the capacity of older adults to adapt to repeated bouts of heat exposure, particularly when using a passive heat acclimation protocol. Furthermore, it remains unclear whether the magnitude of adaptations is affected by age. Objective and hypothesis: To compare physiological adaptations following 7 consecutive days of passive heat exposure between healthy young and older adults. We hypothesized that heat acclimation would enhance heat loss capacity in both groups but to a higher extent in young than in older adults. Methods: Fourteen healthy young (5F/9M, 27 ± 5 years) and 9 older adults (6F/3M, 66 ± 5 years) were exposed to passive heat stress with a water-perfused suit before (pre) and after (post) 7 consecutive days of immersion in 40°C water (~30 min to reach a rectal temperature of 38.5°C, followed by 60 min ≥38.5°C). During the pre/post heat stress test, mean body temperature was computed as 0.8 × esophageal temperature + 0.2 × mean skin temperature. Local sweat rate (LSR) and cutaneous vascular conductance (CVC) were measured at the forearm level. The mean body temperature onset thresholds of LSR and CVC were determined by segmented linear regression. During acclimation visits, rectal temperature and change in body mass were measured. Data are presented as means ± standard deviation or mean differences [95% confidence interval]. Results: Immersion duration (young: 90 ± 10, older: 92 ± 9 min, p=0.53), water temperature (young: 40.3 ± 0.3, older: 40.0 ± 0.5°C, p=0.09) and mean rectal temperature (young: 38.9 ± 0.1, older: 38.8 ± 0.1°C, p=0.07) during heat acclimation did not differ significantly between groups. In response to heat acclimation, rectal temperature decreased similarly ( p=0.36) in young (-0.33°C [-0.50, -0.16]) and older adults (-0.46°C [-0.68, -0.25]) from day 1 to day 7 whereas sweat rate increased to a higher extent ( p=0.05) in young (+511 mL/h [285, 738]) compared with older adults (+232 mL/h [112, 352]). Heat acclimation similarly reduced the mean body temperature onset threshold for CVC in young (-0.18°C [-0.32, -0.05]) and older adults (-0.19°C [-0.36, -0.02]) ( p=0.91), as well as, the mean body temperature onset threshold for LSR (young: -0.13°C [-0.25, -0.01], older: -0.15°C [-0.30, 0.00], p=0.84) during the pre/post heat stress test. Conclusion: These results suggest that passive heat acclimation improves heat loss capacity in young and older adults. However, age may blunt the increase in whole-body sweat rate that accompanies passive heat acclimation, but not other classical markers of human heat acclimation. Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.