Hydration Study

So this past Saturday Ryan and I participated in a medical study that looked at the performance of individuals when they are hydrated and then when they are dehydrated. It was very interesting (and we made a little bit of extra cash, which was nice too). So we got to the gym that the study was taking place at on Saturday around 8:15am or so. We started by giving a urine sample (they had to check to see the dilution of water and the females have to have a pregnancy test before going through it). After the urine test they measures our neck, waist and hips so that they could put all of the data in their program. We had to get weighed every time we changed from one action to another. We were hooked up to a bunch of different little electrodes to measure our vitals. It really reminded me of one of those Gatorade commercials that you watch. We had 12 electrodes (little patches) on us, and 3 little battery operated packs that recorded the info from our patches. Also, we had to swallow a pill that was like a thermometer, to measure the temperature of your core. It was cool because they had a little box that you could hold and it would read the temperature of your insides. It has some metal in it so we have to wear a little wrist band that says we can't have an MRI until we pass it (which they said would be about 3-5 days), but don't worry I don't plan on needing any MRI's before Thursday. We started the day laying on our cots so that they could take our vitals when at rest, and fully hydrated (we had to drink 2 liters of water the night before and another 1 liter the morning of). After that we had a few different position changes that we had to do so they could monitor vitals (after everything we did we had to do the position changes, I guess it gives them a consistent thing to look at and see how we are changing). After laying around for a while we went into a heated room (the room was 104 degrees) and had to do intervals of 40 minutes walking on a treadmill. After each interval we had to lay down, get our vitals, do the position changes, get weighed. We were supposed to do 2-3 intervals, depending on how much water weight we lost in sweat. My pulse was too high after the second walking session and I felt a little dizzy when I got up for the position changes so they told me I didn't have to do the third session of walking, but Ryan had to :). After the walking we had to lay for awhile ago (most of the 8.5 hours was just laying, and only about 2 hours was walking). During the day we watched movies, since you are really just laying around or walking on a treadmill, so we watched Ray, Babel, and Little Miss Sunshine. Oh yeah, throughout the day they had to take samples of your blood, so we had a little valve thing in our arms so they wouldn't have to keep poking us, we had the blood taken 10 times, but they were small amounts. Because they were talking blood, the refilled our system with saline solution every time. It was weird because you could actually feel the solution going through your veins, and you could sort of taste it in the back of your mouth - weird.

Anywho, the ladies were telling us what the study was looking for any it was really interesting. They said that they were testing us so that they could use the information to help individuals in the military and also fire fighters. What they are hoping to do is to have just one of the electrodes hooked up to everyone and like one PDA for the boss and the boss would be able to tell who is getting dehydrated and how much water they will need to fuel their system back up for peak performance. It will mostly be used for people in hot areas for long periods of time, military in the dessert or fire fighters fighting forest fires, etc. It is cool to think that we might be able to help others just by doing this study.

I have posted all of the photos we took under My Photos on the side, but thought I would put up one for you all to enjoy. The photo is of the ladies taking off the patches from Ryan. We actually both have some of the sticky stuff on us, so you can see where they were, but hopefully it will all come off in the next day or two after much more scrubbing.