Dr. Claire Berryman, assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition and Integrative Physiology, received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to look at how the body responds to daily low oxygen exposure.
The study will look at 60 participants as they sleep in conditions that simulate higher elevations while adhering to a healthy, calorie-restricted diet. Berryman came up with the idea while doing her postdoctoral research with the Army. “Military personnel living and working at high altitude for three weeks lost more than double the amount of weight we would expect under the same conditions at sea level,” she said. “This was detrimental to a population trying to maintain body weight, muscle mass and peak performance.”
Faculty members across FSU and beyond will serve as co-investigators and collaborate on this project, including Professors Robert Hickner and Chester Ray and Assistant Professor Stephen Hennigar, Professor Angelina Sutin and Physician and Associate Professor Gregory Todd from the FSU College of Medicine, Associate Professor Hongyuan Cao from the FSU College of Arts and Sciences, and Professor Eric Ravussin from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
Read more about this story here.