Research
The Schrage Lab is focused on understanding the integrated control of blood flow in health and disease. Proper control of blood flow has enormous influence on blood pressure and oxygen delivery-especially during exercise or other environmental stress. Specifically, the laboratory is interested in how cardiovascular conditions including obesity or pre-diabetes alters blood flow and how regular physical activity may improve blood flow and blood vessel function. Various state-of-art methods are used to conduct experiments directly in human volunteers.
The primary goal of this research is to determine the causes of age-and disease-related alterations in muscle blood flow or brain blood flow, and the mechanisms responsible. In other words, how do our bodies regulate blood flow, and how does this change with age or disease?
Integrative approaches to test how blood flow is controlled during exercise or environmental stressors like hypoxia are used. The BioDynamics Lab is very interested in mechanisms responsible for controlling blood flow, including signals from nerves, contracting muscles, substances in the blood, and the vessels themselves. While much of this research focuses on the cardiovascular response to a single exercise session (acute exercise), adults before and after long-term interventions such as regular exercise (chronic exercise training) are studied.
Research questions:
- What are the body’s signals responsible for regulating the “normal” blood flow response to exercise?
- What are the effects of free radicals on vasodilation in obesity?
- What is the impact of metabolic syndrome on vascular function?
- Does diet and exercise improve vascular function in pre-diabetes?