Effectiveness of Health Promotion and Prevention Medicine Exercise Program to Reduce Body Heat Accumulation for Heat Injury Prevention in Overweight Conscripts

Abstract

Introduction: Heat injury is major health problem among conscripts. Heat stroke was the most severe type of heat injury. There are several risk factors induced heat injury and overweight is one of them. Medical Department, Royal Thai Army develops the guideline, HPPM Exercise Program, which has been recommended to several military training units for preventing exertion heat injury particularly in obesity conscripts. Objective: To evaluate effectiveness of exercise program among conscripts who have body mass index (BMI) higher than 28 kg/m2. Method: Conscripts in 3 military training units located at different area were divided into 2 groups by body mass index (BMI). The conscripts with BMI < 28 kg/m2 were control group while the subjects with BMI higher than this value were experiment group. An HPPM exercise program was applied in each group for 8 weeks. The data collection composed of Environmental monitoring collecting form and Individual monitoring collecting form. Data analysis was calculated by difference between heat input and heat output, as recommended in NIOSH Criteria for a Recommended Standard Occupational Exposure to Heat and Hot Environments. The difference of mean heat accumulation among experiment and control group was statistically test by paired t test, while the mean of heat accumulation before and after HPPM exercise program application in both group was tested by unpaired t-test. Results: Two hundred thirty-nine conscripts were enrolled in this study with response rate of 96.10%. There were no statistical significant of body heat accumulation between both groups during period of study. The interesting results are both group showing decrement of body heat accumulation statistical significant in 2nd week and prolonged effect is observed 4th week. Conclusion: HPPM exercise program has effectiveness to reduce body heat accumulation among obesity conscripts after 2nd and 4th weeks. This study recommend that HPPM exercise programs can reduce body heat accumulation after 2nd weeks and should be applied at least 4 weeks for conscripts.