Legal Steroids: Rapid Thermal Exchange Cooling Glove

“Equal to or substantially better than steroids, and it’s not illegal.” -Stanford’s Dr. H. Craig Heller

With humongous salaries, countless endorsements and the idolization of the masses, more and more athletes are becoming open to the idea of taking steroids to improve their on-field performance.

What we’re learning about the effects of performance enhancing drugs on the body are devastating: hormonal, cardiovascular and neurological issues and even worse.

Biologists at Stanford University are on the cusp of a breakthrough device, a cooling glove, that will help athletes exceed their peak performance levels in a unique but completely healthy manner.

Rapid Thermal Exchange

The process is called rapid thermal exchange (RTX), a game-changing method to quickly lower one’s core body temperature, allowing your body to experience a fresh start after a hard workout and enabling athletes to reach new performance heights.

Humans have special veins located in their face, feet and hands that can quickly influence our core body temperatures. These veins known as AVA’s (arteriovenous anastomoses) regulate the major flow of blood throughout our body.

By manipulating our AVA’s, the Stanford researchers have shown success at lowering the core temperatures of high performance athletes incredibly quickly and with no noted side effects, enabling them to go harder and stronger during the next round of performance.

Performance in the Heat

It’s widely understood that high core temperatures are detrimental to athletic performance due to the fact that the bodily components crucial to energy production shut down when they reach approximately 104 °F. This self-regulation system naturally occurs within the body, preventing our cells from self-destructing. “Your muscle cells are saying, you can’t work that hard anymore, because if you do you’re going to cook and die” Dr. Dennis Grahn said.

The Cooling Glove

Lead researchers Dr. H. Craig Heller and Dr. Dennis Grahn have come up with a mitt that slides onto one hand and uses a built-in vacuum to expose the AVA veins in our hand. The glove is airtight, and once the veins near the surface of our palms, cool water is excreted from the RTX device onto the veins. This process cools the blood, which from that point is rapidly recirculated throughout the body. The legal steroids of sorts essentially resets your entire system, letting you go all out and beyond on your next work out.

Test Results

Heller and Grahn verified their findings in a series of tests of Bay Area athletes. The result was a near elimination of muscle fatigue; participants were able to do just as many reps, if not more, after a number of rigorous workouts followed up with a quick, three minute cooling glove treatment.

The tests (pull-ups, bench press, running, cycling) conducted over a six week period showed a “rate of physical performance improvement that was just unprecedented.” Here’s some highlights:

- Over 3 weeks of bench press training, palm cooling increased work volume by 40% (vs. 13% with no treatment; n = 8, p , 0.05).

- Over 6 weeks of pull-up training, palm cooling increased work volume by 144% in pull-up experienced subjects (vs. 5% over 2 weeks with no treatment; n = 7, p , 0.001) and by 80% in pull-up subjects (vs. 20% with no treatment; n = 11, p , 0.01).

- Strength (1 repetition maximum) increased 22% over 10 weeks of pyramid bench press training (4 weeks with no treatment followed by 6 weeks with palm cooling; n = 10, p , 0.001).

The report states, “These results verify previous observations about the effects of palm cooling on work volume, demonstrate a link between core temperature and fatigue onset during resistive exercise, and suggest a novel means for improving strength and work volume training responses.”

Health Concerns?

The research team incredibly found no evidence of the body being overworked or damaged.

One of the best features of the cooling glove is that it works in reverse as a heat glove too. If a medical patient is put under anesthesia, their core body temperature will drop, which often takes hours to reverse. Wearing the rapid thermal exchange glove and using warm water instead of cool, Grahn and Heller were able to heat back up patients’ core body temperatures in under ten minutes!

Commercial Possibilities

The duo plans to soon bring their rapid thermal exchange glove to market, and nearly have their commercial model, “Core Control” ready to roll. Their website promises to have the Core Control RTX system available in early 2013 for under $1000. You can actually join the pre-order wait list today.

Dr. Heller and Dr. Grahn hope to soon have these gloves in every hospital and sports arena in the world. What are your thoughts on this disruptive technology?

Avacore Scientific Study via Stanford University

Comments

comments