We are better together

As medical scientists, we work towards a major goal: to improve human health through prevention and treatment of disease. Given the size of this challenge, a key feature of the most successful projects is capacity to bring together collaborators with complementary expertise and common interests. We at CERG have established partnership with scientists from all over the world, and in recent years we have strengthened our collaborations with researchers from the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil). As a highlight of this collaboration, we are excited to join our colleagues in Sao Paulo this week for the first UTFORSK Seminar in Exercise Physiology.

The UTFORSK project (ExercisePhysiology.no) started in 2014 and is a joint initiative between our research group (CERG) and the University of Sao Paulo (School of Physical Education and Sport). We’ve had several activities in the past months, including joint courses, exchange of students and joint supervision. The upcoming seminar will provide an informal environment for discussing our most exciting projects.

“En reise til helvete og tilbake” – bli med på “Man in Extreme Environments”

Kjære alle eventyrlystne, ventetiden for ett nytt Man in Extreme Environments er snart over. Dette er tredje gang Man in Extreme Environments arrangeres og tidligere år har vi blitt trollbundet av fantastiske historier fra de store dyp til verdensrommet. Årets program er minst like unikt som tidligere utgaver og CERG har den store gleden å invitere alle til en storslått kveld på Brukbar/Blæst Fredag 18 desember kl 1900.

Se bilder fra Man in Extreme Environments 2013 med Paul Rose, Børge Ousland og Christopher McDugall her!

Årets program består av følgende foredragsholdere:

1.      Emil Eide Eriksen – “Rowing the Atlantic”

Vi trengte ikke gå lenger enn til Trondheim for å finne en som har gjort noe svært imponerende. I 2011 rodde han og en kamerat 5000km i 59 dager non stop, uten noen eksterne forsyninger, i en 6,9 meter lang robåt, tvers over Atlanterhavet.

International Scholar Award to Linda Ernstsen

American College of Sports Medicine’s 62nd Annual Meeting, 6th World Congress on Exercise is Medicine® and World Congress on the Basic Science of Exercise Fatigue is held May 26-30, 2015 San Diego, California. This is the most comprehensive sports medicine and exercise science conference in the world with more than 6000 participants.

It is a great pleasure to announce that ACSM has selected Linda Ernstsen from K.G. Jebsen Center of Exercise in Medicine as the 2015 ACSM Oded Bar-Or International Scholar Award recipient.

The price allows Dr. Ernstsen to work with, and learn from, the world-leading expert in “Exercise Epidemiology” Professor Steven Blair at Departments of Exercise Science and Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA, for 3 months. Currently she lives in South Carolina and have already started her work with Professor Blair and his research group where the aim is to learn new methodological approaches within epidemiological and clinical research on the association between physical fitness, mental health and cognitive function.

On Friday May 29, she will be recognized and receive the price at the ACSM Awards Banquet. K.G. Jebsen Center of Exercise in Medicine is proud of Ernstsen´s achievement, wish her all the best of luck working at University of South Carolina, and look forward to get her back home with new knowledge that will benefit our research group.

Ulrik Wisløff, professor and head of CERG

Communication of scientific data – The CERG approach

Communication and dissemination is an important part of the research chain. Unfortunately, scientists too often overlook communication with the general public, or tend to speak our ”tribal” language, making it hard to understand the implications of scientific results.

Within the CERG group we work hard with this aspect, and try to reach out to the general public through several social media channels, user-friendly health and physical activity tools, media contributions, welcoming visitors to our lab, and attendance at both scientific and public events. Having many followers of our work humbles us, and we hope our effort in communicating the implications of our research is helping as many people as possible.

The fitness age of crossfitters

Last week we measured maximal oxygen uptake in several crossfit athletes at Crossfit Bondi. Below you can read about how their age corresponded with their fitness age.

See video and pictures from the tests in this post: How fit are crossfitters?

 

Cross fit is a workout method using a combination og endurance and strength exercise training, implementing the interval exercise principle quite a bit during training. During the Bondi Fitness Festival Professor Ulrik Wisløff presented the results from the maximal oxygen uptake testing at Bondi Corssfit, together with a presentation of our main reserach focus and results, in addition to a demonstration of high intensity interval training performed by the two Crossfit Bondi members, Carlo and Cora.

The men at Crossfit Bondi had an average maximal oxygen uptake of 50 mL/kg/min, and with a mean biological age of  33 years old, their fitness age corresponded to 24 years of age.

The women at Crossfit Bondi had an average maximal oxygen uptake of 50 mL/kg/min as well, and with a mean biological age of  35, their fitness age corresponded to 18 years of age, making them relative more fit than the men tested.

Find your fitness age by using our Fitness Calculator thet you can find here!

 

 

Trondheim as a smart, healthy and active city

Is it possible to build a new part of Trondheim into a health and environmental friendly city for its inhabitants?

Trondheim health cluster and NTNU recently hosted a 2 day work shop discussing how to develop the Rotvoll area into a smart healthy city part. Through an interdisciplinary discussion, several key focus areas including health, mobility in town, road and housing structure, pollution, noise and new innovative technologies were presented and discussed.

Through interdisciplinary planning it is possible to develop a moving city, allowing for walking and biking as the main mode of transportation, availability of healthy food and environmentally sustainable choices. To achieve this, the smart choices need to be the easiest choice to make.

Exercise and mental health

This week I was really happy when I got the message that I was given the opportunity of presenting my research findings as a moderated poster at the Norwegian Research Councils conference in mental health and drug research in Tromsø (Norway). In practical terms this means that I was given eight minutes to present our preliminary findings from the Nord-Trøndelag Health Study in front of the audience.

Our results suggest that being physical inactive and depressed increases mortality risk with 50% in populations with and without established ischemic heart disease.

Tailored exercise for your DNA

Les dette innlegget på norsk her!

Several research reports state that our genes play an important role in how each of us responds to different types of exercise. The first major study that showed variation in training response was published in 1980. In this study, 720 individuals participated in a training program that lasted five months, and the researchers measured the maximal oxygen uptake (the best measure of fitness) before and after the exercise period. Surprisingly, they saw a huge difference in changes of oxygen uptake. A few actually decreased while others increased tremendously.

CERG researchers going abroad for another International Conference!!!

Earlier this fall CERG researchers went to San Francisco, California-USA, to attend the “High Blood Pressure Research” (HBPR) 2014 scientific sessions, sponsored by the American Heart Association’s Council on Hypertension and Council on Kidney in Cardiovascular Disease.

For those who never heard about American Heart Association, it is a non-profit organization in the United States that fosters appropriate cardiac care in an effort to reduce disability and deaths caused by cardiovascular disease and stroke. More precisely, the HBPR 2014 scientific sessions were a four-day scientific program with more than 500 presentations focusing on recent advances in basic and clinical high blood pressure research, and the participation of experts in the fields of hypertension and its relationship to heart and kidney diseases, stroke, obesity, and genetics.

Why CERG have been attending this type of meeting?

Simulating the human condition in a digital age: Virtual Physiological Human 2014

Long before the availability of computers and technology, physiologists were using mathematical modelling to describe complex systems using physical and mathematical principles. Combining knowledge of physics with experimental observation, pioneering physiologists such as Poiseuille, Fick and Krogh were able to describe the physiological complexities of blood flow that were only confirmed through direct measurement decades after their initial description. As the digital age progresses and available computational power continues to increase, we now move towards a more detailed modelling approach aimed at using existing experimental data gathered from all around the world from both populations and individual patients to create a virtual representation of the human body. This concept, known as The Virtual Physiological Human, aims to lead to new, more predictive clinical technologies that allow for personalized medicine to be readily available.