Air-conditioned pads keep football players cool

By Megan Rauscher

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Cool, dry air blown underneath the shoulder pads of a football player during rest periods helps lowers core body temperature and heart rate, reducing the chances of heat-related illness and maybe even boosting game performance, research shows.

Football players often practice and play in hot humid weather, placing them at risk for heat-related illness. Researchers at the University of Florida Research Foundation developed the Temperature Management System (TMS) to address the dangers of heat-related illness and the need for prevention, which were brought to national attention following the deaths of five football players between 2001 and 2004.

The TMS cooling system works with specially designed football shoulder pads that have grooves or air channels to funnel cool dry air over the player's back and chest. The same cooling effect can be achieved with fitting "off-the-shelf" shoulder pads with a TMS air bladder.

During games or practice, players leaving the field or between practice stations simply "hook up" to a small, portable air compressor to get a blast of cool air for a short period of time before getting back in the game.

In a study funded by a grant from National Football League Charities, Dr. Mary Beth Horodyski of the University of Florida in Gainesville and colleagues looked at the efficacy of the cooling system in 15 athletes.

"We wanted to know whether it, in fact, helps keep the core body temperature a little bit lower when exercising, and it does," Horodyski told Reuters Health. "It also assisted in keeping heart rate lower as the exercise sessions increased in length of time."

She reported the findings this week at the annual meeting of the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine.

Wearing shoulder pads, shorts and football helmets, the athletes participated in two testing sessions -- one with and one without cool dry air blown under their shoulder pads. Three exercise cycles -- consisting of jogging and sprinting on a treadmill in a room with a heat index of roughly 92 degrees Fahrenheit to simulate summertime play -- were each separated by 10-minute rest periods.

During the test session when the cool dry air was blown under the shoulder pads, there was as much as a 1 degree Fahrenheit reduction in core body temperature, Horodyski reported. Additionally, with the cool air, the athletes had a significantly lower heart rate than without the cool dry air.

"Any small amount of reduction in core body temperature and decrease in heart rate could be the difference between an athlete suffering a heat-related illness or not," Horodyski said. There is also some evidence from a University of Connecticut study that keeping core body temperature under control can boost an athlete's performance, she said.