2016 Volume 53 Issue 4 Pages 145-164
Persons with spinal cord injuries suffer from disorder of thermoregulation including defective sweating and vasomotor disturbance over most of the body. As we expect sustained physical activity to be one of the methods to alleviate burden on the body against heat stress and to reduce dependency on cooling and heating equipment of persons with spinal cord injuries, a 24 or 42-month longitudinal survey was conducted on three persons with spinal cord injuries (each with cervical spinal cord injury, thoracic cord injury and lumbar cord injury) to understand the relationship between sustained physical activity and changes in adaptability to thermal environment. As a result of measuring axillary temperature upon awakening, the level of axillary temperature tended to increase for the person with cervical spinal cord injury, and axillary temperature tended to converge to a narrow temperature range for the person with lumbar cord injury. Furthermore, response to adapt to room temperature began to appear in the skin temperature on the paralyzed segment for persons with cervical spinal cord injury and lumbar cord injury, based on experiments in an artificial climate chamber. This survey indicated that sustained physical activity might improve the adaptability to thermal environment for persons with spinal cord injuries.
