Monitoring change of body fluids during physical exercise using bioimpedance spectroscopy

During physical exercise body muscles are activated and heat is generated. In intensive physical activity, heat will be released by sweating to protect the body of overheating. Sweating and convection implies a water loss which can lead to dehydration. To avoid health problems as a result of dehydration, the body water content can be monitored to detect changes early in order to rehydrate in time. Bioimpedance Spectroscopy (BIS) is a comfortable measurement method to monitor the body composition under controlled conditions, that is used for different applications, like monitoring dialysis. Unfortunately, the physiological changes due to sportive activities can influence the BIS and complicate the measurement. In this article, a study is presented in which the fluid content of five test persons is monitored during physical exercise, whereas all test persons did not drink anything before and during sport. During training not only the body composition was measured using a BIS device but also the skin temperature was monitored with an infrared camera. As a result, it could be shown that such a combination of measurement systems allow to use BIS devices also during sport as significant monitoring systems for detecting a person´s body fluid loss.