Stratégies d'aide à la thermorégulation chez les athlètes blessés médullaires

Aims: During physical activity, athletes with a spinal cord injury have to face thermoregulation problems due to an alteration of their nervous system. The repercussion of the core body temperature depends on the climate. The aim of this revue was to obtain an overview of the cooling and warming techniques used by paraplegics and tetraplegics when practicing a physical activity. Methods: We used the PICO (participants, intervention/exposition, comparison, outcomes) method to highlight the terms we need for the search of scientific articles. Results: During a physical activity in a hot environment, different cooling techniques have been demonstrated: cooling jackets, spraying water on the body, ingestion of cold substances, cooling of hands and feet or a combination of several of these techniques. All of these techniques have been shown to slow down the increase in core temperature compared to a control group. In a cold environment, athletes try to warm-up with warm clothes or by implementing effective strategies to maintain their core temperature between the warm-up period and the competition. Conclusion: Regarding sports in hot environments, there are different cooling strategies that are used. However, there is a lack of evidence as to which is most effective. For sport in a cold environment, there are very few studies that deal with this subject. Research is still needed to establish which techniques are the best to warm-up.