Changes in hormone excretion in swimmers over the course of a training season

Date
1991
Authors
Hale, David
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Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the change in catecholamine levels over the course of a training season in collegiate swimmers. Swimmers were chosen because there are no reports in the literature that look at the response to stress in actively training swimmers. Additionally, there are very few studies which use athletes trained at the intensity of collegiate swimmers (27, 64, 156). Thus, one of the first requirements of the study was to obtain data on collegiate swimmers training at elite levels. The study was designed to determine the long term changes in hormone secretion patterns when the intensity of training was continually increased. There are no reports of studies on athletes training for more than four months duration (287). Since most elite athletes train for much longer periods of time than four months, the first objective was to develop a research protocol that would result in information on catecholamine production over an extended period of time. A second objective was to test for a relationship between a simple psychological measure and the results obtained from physiological measurements. Since there are no reports about the psychological changes in elite athletes during a training season, a third objective was to determine if there was any correlation between psychological and physiological changes. A fourth objective was to evaluate whether a testing day could be broken into time periods and then assess if there was a particular time period of the day when there was more or less change due to stress. Although a few reports have described the variation in secretion in sedentary subjects with time of day (86, 104,183), none have looked at this variation in elite athletes. A fifth objective was to determine what variable or variables correlated with hormone secretion. Was it distance trained, psychological stress, time of day, or some other factor? Again, no one has reported attempting to determine the relationship of catecholamines to other variables in elite athletes. The last objective of this study was to determine whether any observed changes in catecholamine output were due to changes in production or to changes in metabolism. By measuring the metabolites of norepinephrine and epinephrine, it was anticipated that the factors responsible for changes in hormone excretion could be determined. Thus. this research sought to test three main hypotheses. First: there is a change in catecholamine production in swimmers throughout the training season. Second: this change could be correlated to changes in psychological stress evaluations and to the amount of distance trained. Finally: the change in catecholamine production could be directly correlated to a change in catecholamine metabolite production.
Description
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1991.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-163)
Microfiche.
xi, 163 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm
Keywords
Catecholamines, Stress (Physiology) -- Testing, Swimming -- Physiological aspects
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Theses for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (University of Hawaii at Manoa). Biomedical Sciences (Physiology); no. 2592
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