Effect Of Short-Term Training In Hypoxia On Oxidative Stress And Inflammatory Markers In Overweight Women

Abstract

Humans are more prone to oxidative stress due to acute and chronic hypoxia exposure. Chronic low-grade inflammation and oxidative stress are significant characteristics of chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes, and hypertension. Training in hypoxia has been proposed to have a favorable effect on weight management and disease prevention. However, the majority of research on hypoxia and oxidative stress has focused on people who live at high altitudes or on athletes, but rarely on untrained individuals. This study aimed to investigate the effect of hypoxia on oxidative stress and inflammatory markers in overweight women. Eleven sedentary overweight women (mean ± SD; age 24.8 ± 4.2 years, height 160 ± 5.3 cm, body mass 79.6 ± 7 kg, body mass index (BMI) 31.2 ± 3 kg/m2) volunteered to participate in this study. The participants attended four times. The control condition session was a treadmill walking exercise in normoxia (NORM), and the experimental condition involved the same exercise session performed in normobaric hypoxia (HYPO; FiO2 ≈ 0.14 ≈ 3200 m simulated altitude). The testing order of conditions was randomized, single-blinded, and counterbalanced. The results showed a significant effect of GSH/GSSG ratio in terms of condition (P= 0.020) and time (P= 0.017). Also, we found a significant difference in terms of time for GM-CSF. Furthermore, there was no significant effect of worsening markers after training in hypoxia. We conclude that training in hypoxia is an effective way to maximize the possible benefits of training at a moderate intensity with the added benefits of hypoxic training on other metabolic indicators.

Date of Award	2022
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	HBKU College of Health & Life Sciences