Research

Autophagy is a cellular recycling system that maintains the intercellular environment and has implications on health, disease, and aging. It is also involved in promoting the beneficial effects of exercise and caloric restriction including intermittent fasting. Our work looks at the autophagic response to exercise and other cellular processes and the potential implications it may have on human function and health.

Exercise including resistance training, high-intensity interval training, and high-intensity functional training improve cardiometabolic health and reduces risk of chronic disease. Various dietary supplementation can also enhance metabolic health including antioxidant as well as creatine supplementation. We are studying these nutritional compounds and their effect on markers of cardiometabolic health such as glucose regulation, insulin sensitivity, cholesterol, obesity, and adipokine and myokine profiles to understand their potential use to improave and prevent obesity-related disease.

Nutrition is central to promoting training adaptations and performance. It has the ability to fuel training, enhance recovery, and augment adaptations. We have studied and written about the impact of protein, carbohydrate, and supplementation such as BCAA, fish oil, and other compounds on various training types including resistance training and CrossFit.

Exercise is a physiological stress that causes the body to adapt and increase its capacity and function. Metabolic demands, mechanical loading, oxidative stress, and numerous other stressors elicit acute responses in the body in order to perform and sustain exercise while long-term they lead to specific adaptations. Depending on the training goal, the exercise stress must be specific. We have studied and characterized a number of physiological and metabolic responses to various types of training including high-intensity interval training, high-intensity functional training, and resistance training.