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What
sort of measurements will be carried out?
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Deltatrac
The Deltatrac is a ventilated hood system
which is used to measure basal metabolic rate
, that is the minimum amount of energy the
body requires while resting. It measures carbon
dioxide output and oxygen intake From this
we can determine a volunteers’ energy
requirements which can be used to calculate
the amounts of energy that they need during
the course of their study. The measurement
takes about 40 minutes.
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Volunteer and VMax
This system is a metabolic cart used to measure
energy expenditure during exercise. This is
one of our volunteers on the exercise machine
and you can see that we also monitor heart
rate. She is breathing into a mouthpiece and
breath samples are analysed to measure the
energy
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BodPod
The BodPod is a hi-tech piece of equipment
used to measure fat and fat-free mass. It
replaces the need for gold standard underwater
weighing which was obviously much more intensive
for the volunteer. The volunteer sits in the
BodPod and has to wear swimming trunks and
a cap. The measurement takes 15 minutes. The
volunteer can then have a printout of his
/her body fat percentage.
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Human calorimeters
These are unique to the UK and are whole body
indirect calorimetry chambers. We monitor
gaseous exchange to continually measure energy
expendiure for up to seven consecutive days
and nights. Volunteers actually live in this
small room for this length of time. You can
see that is very intensive for the volunteer
and staff running the project. The Unit runs
24 hours a day with a member of staff on call
at all times.
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ECG
Here is our resident GP who is carrying out
an ECG test on one of our volunteers. Each
volunteer is screened by a GP to ensure they
do not have any illnesses that would exclude
them from the study i.e Diabetes, heart disease.
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DEXA (whole body scanner )
The Dexa uses low dose x-rays to give us information
on bone content and density. This machine
is typically used in the clinical sestting
to diagnose osteoporosis - thinning of the
bones. In the HNU we aim to measure body composition
and the changes that happen whilst on specific
diets. We use it to measure bone mass which
can change during heavy weight loss. The body
is made up of bone measured by the (DEXA),
water measured by (Deuterium dilution), fat
and fat-free mass (measured by the Bod Pod).
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