Badwater Forum

I'd like to post a public "thank you" here to Lisa Bliss, MD. Lisa always makes time to help others, despite her busy schedule, and has helped me personally in trying to find my way with ultramarathons as I am very new to the sport. Many of you on this forum know I am planning to co-crew Bill LaDieu at this year's Badwater and being so new to this sport and never having been to Death Valley, I am very concerned that I perform well for Bill and give him the best crewing possible - it's a huge responsibility I'm not taking lightly and I am ever so grateful to people like Lisa Bliss, MD who take time out of their schedules to help me with my many questions.

Aside from that, Lisa also responded in an email to me regarding my post inquiring about the HQ heat sensor pill. I'm sure most of you here are aware of Lisa's 2004 study while running the race and many have her 2004 study results in Power Point. I tried to send it to several people but their mailboxes must have been nearly full and it bounced back to me - it's quite a large file and I apologize. Those of you who still want me to send it to you, please provide an email address that has plenty of space. For newbies here not familiar with it, Dr. Bliss also conducted a 2005 hyponatremia study at the race that is discussed here: http://www.badwater.org and then click on the "Science" link at the top of the page.

This is Lisa's recent response to me re: the heat sensor pill:

Hi Connie,

I'm a lurker on the death valley solo forum and saw that you asked about the heat sensor pill. I used the pill during my 2004 race, sponsored by HQ. I tried it out in advance and learned how to use the software and it seemed pretty good to me, so I gave it a try. I did it for "experimental" purposes. I was curious about what happens to core temps out there during the course of the race (and I was NOT curious enough to do serial rectal temps!) It worked great. I was very pleased with everything. My only major problem was that a couple weeks after the run and I had sent back the equipment, my computer crashed and I lost all the data that was in beautiful graph format! I was so bummed!

In any case, I had HQ send me 6 pills (they run about $50 each), 2 to try prior, and 4 for the race (thinking you never know when you're gonna have to go!). I ended up using only one pill during the whole run.

Interestingly, we had significant difficulty keeping the analyzer cool enough for it to work! Once we figured out that it had to be stored in the cooler, we were good. I had my core temp measured every 30 minutes. It took about 2 hours for the pill to get "deep enough" into the GI tract to measure core, so the first temps readings were in the 70s due to my ingestion of fluids during those first miles of the race. After that, till the end of the race, it was fine.

The only time it came in handy from a medical point of view was at mile 90 when I became symptomatic from hyponatremia. I felt weird and my body just didn't want to work. I also had what I can only describe as "tunnel hearing." When I finally decided something was wrong, I had my core temp and weight taken. I suspected hyponatremia and really didn't think it was heat exhaustion, but for scientific purposes, I wanted to document my temperature. Interestingly, that is the only LOW temp I had during the run. All other temps were between 98.6 and 100, which is certainly normal (and to me surprisingly LOW) during an event like this. Of course, you know the story goes I had indeed accummulated 10 pounds of extra fluids and was symptomatic from hyponatremia. A few good pees cleared that right up!

Hope this helps for info. Let me know if you have any other questions. I don't mind at all if you post this to the forum.

Best to you,

Lisa
http://www.pbase.com/lbliss/image/32444426

http://www.pbase.com/lbliss/image/32444425