Delayed Onset of Reoxygenation in Inactive Muscles After High-Intensity Exercise

Abstract

Oxygenation, measured by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), in inactive muscles decreases during high-intensity exercise because of the decrease of oxygen supply. However, there have been few reports regarding recovery of inactive muscle oxygenation after exercise. This study was performed to examine reoxygenation in the biceps brachii muscle (BB) after supramaximal cycling exercise. Six active young male volunteers (age: 22 ± 3 years, peak oxygen uptake (VO): 53.8 ± 5.4 mL/kg/min, mean ± S.D.) performed warm-up exercise, followed by cycling exercise at 140% of VO for 30 s and then at 0 watt for 4 min (recovery exercise). Tissue oxygen saturation (StO) in the vastus lateralis muscle (VL) and BB was monitored by spatially resolved NIRS throughout the test. The decrease rate of StO during exercise was 24.7 ± 7.5 p.p. in VL and 15.1 ± 8.2 p.p. in BB (N.S.). StO in VL increased immediately after the end of exercise, but StO in BB decreased continuously for 12.7 ± 7.8 s after exercise. Moreover, the time of half-recovery from the minimum to peak values after exercise was significantly (P < 0.05) longer at StO in BB (39.5 ± 12.2 s) than VL (25.2 ± 6.0 s). These results suggest that the recovery of microvascular oxygen supply and blood flow in inactive muscles does not start immediately after exercise.

New Insights into Mechanical, Metabolic and Muscle Oxygenation Signals During and After High-Intensity Tethered Running

“…4, Panel D). Our results are the opposite of Osawa et al 14 , who investigated the recovery of BB after supramaximal cycling exercise with legs (140% of VO 2peak for 30 s and then no-load cycle exercise for 4 minutes). They observed that recovery of tissue oxygenation in biceps brachii did not occur immediately after effort and the reoxygenation in the arm was slower than in the leg.…”

“…They observed that recovery of tissue oxygenation in biceps brachii did not occur immediately after effort and the reoxygenation in the arm was slower than in the leg. However, the exercise type adopted by Osawa et al 14 (cycling efforts for leg) and recovery process (arm in rest and leg in movement) are different that applied by us. In the light of our study, for high-intensity running exercise, the biceps brachii seems to play an important role during process recovery, which implies in future proposals of aerobic physical training to potentiate this muscle response.…”

“…However, despite the significance of tissue oxygenation 18 there are very few studies investigating the more and less active muscle responses during and after exercise 14,42,[61][62][63] especially in running effort 12,19 . According to Perrey and Ferrari in a recent review 39 , the majority of the NIRS studies examined the responses of the vastus lateralis muscle.…”

“…For this, two PortaMon devices (Artinis Medical Systems BV, Zetten, Netherlands) including three light source transmitters (each one with two wavelengths between 750 and 850 nm) at 30, 35, and 40 mm distance to the receiver, were used to determine the tissue saturation index (TSI, %). These devices were also used to obtained the changes in the oxyhemoglobin ([O 2 Hb]), These NIRS devices were positioned on two right muscles: the biceps brachii (BB), in medial biceps brachii portion 14,42,43 , an upper limb muscle considered as less active during running exercise, and the vastus lateralis belly (VL), 15 cm above the proximal edge of the patella and 5 cm towards the external side 44,45 parallel to the long axis of the muscle 19 considered more active during running effort 16,46 .The equipment was wrapped tightly in a transparent plastic to avoid humidity and which created a waterproof barrier 13 , and by a dark band, to secure the probe and protect it from environmental light.…”

“…Most investigations involving power efforts and muscle oxygenation analysis during high-intensity exercises were performed on a cycle ergometer [12][13][14][15] and in repeated sprint 13,16,17 but with measurements conducted in one muscle group 16,18 or in independent exercise to compare arm vs leg oxygen responses 13 . Rissanen et al 19 performed simultaneous analysis in biceps brachii and vastus lateralis in incremental treadmill running, observing differences between less and more active muscle oxygenation, especially in severe-intensity exercise.…”