January 18, 2024
Keio University School of Medicine
Grace Imaging Inc.
A joint research group from Keio University, including Senior Lecturer Yoshinori Katsumata of the Institute for Integrated Sports Medicine, School of Medicine, and Researcher Hiroki Okawara of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, along with Grace Imaging Inc. (CEO: Daisuke Nakajima), has revealed that the sweat lactate threshold (sLT), which can be easily determined by real-time monitoring of sweat lactate levels using a wearable sweat lactate sensor, is a highly reliable and valid indicator of the anaerobic threshold (AT) during exercise in a hypoxic environment, similar to a normoxic environment.
Exercise is often called a panacea and is crucial for maintaining health, regardless of the presence of illness. In recent years, hypoxic training has been recognized as a way to train more efficiently with a lower load, and training rooms with hypoxic environments are becoming increasingly common in fitness gyms, especially in urban areas. However, determining the appropriate exercise intensity for hypoxic training requires measuring the anaerobic threshold (AT), an indicator of its effectiveness and exercise load, which is generally considered difficult. This is because determining AT requires expensive and large-scale respiratory gas analysis equipment, and its analysis demands specialized knowledge. Therefore, there has been a need to develop a simpler method for measuring an AT indicator that can be widely applied in places like sports gyms.
This study demonstrated that the sLT obtained using a lightweight and simple wearable sweat lactate device can determine a useful estimate of AT, even in a hypoxic environment. The widespread adoption of this evaluation method in hypoxic training is expected to contribute to the development of new exercise strategies that meet diverse needs, such as disease prevention and treatment, and sports performance enhancement, by providing appropriate hypoxic training environments tailored to individual needs.
These research findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports on December 21, 2023 (JST).
For the full press release, please see below.