Biological Sciences Prof. Craig Heller and senior resident scientist Dennis Grahn have developed a gadget called CoreControl that could improve the performance of the struggling Cardinal football team. By cooling the body internally, CoreControl re-energizes people so they can work harder and longer.

In a New York Times article published Dec. 13, CoreControl is described as a simple, hand-held device that works by using negative pressure to redistribute the blood flow to vessels in the palm of the hand — an area where heat loss occurs most frequently. Since the veins and arteries in our palms are able to carry large amounts of blood, this is an area where CoreControl can prompt more rapid heat exchange by allowing steady blood flow.

“The performance enhancement discovery came as a result of pulling heat from people who exercise,” Heller explains. “We realized that we can eliminate exhaustion from people, so instead of someone fatiguing, they just keep on going.”

Grahn elaborates on the product’s function, explaining how CoreControl allows “direct access to circulating blood in [the] body.”

“We maintain pretty constant internal temperatures, and we produce heat as a byproduct of cell metabolism,” Grahn says. “The body is always generating heat, but the external environment is also a factor. It can be really hot or really cold, so what our system does is it has clever ways to protect against the external environment through insulation. By cooling the circulation fluid (the blood) of the body, you pull out excess heat and you prevent the temperature sensitive systems that are most likely to fail from failing.”

Ironically, the inspiration for CoreControl was the need to re-warm patients in the recovery room.

“It would normally take nurses two to three hours to make patients stop shivering,” Heller says. “Grahn got the idea from a meeting he went to at NASA in which they were using negative pressure to redistribute blood flow. We then used negative pressure to pull blood into the arm and we heated the arm and found that we could re-warm patients in two to three minutes instead of two to three hours.”

Through the same process, the professors found that they could rapidly extract heat from people as well. They discovered that for areas like the palms of the hands, soles of the feet and the face — places where heat loss occurs recurrently — heat extraction would be crucial in allowing a person to continue regular body function.

Heller says that they are also continuing to develop and improve the product so that it can be accessible to military and emergency personnel.

“Heat casualties are one of the biggest problems in Iraq,” Heller says. “The ambient temperature is 104 degrees and soldiers have to ride in highly armored vehicles that do not have air conditioning while wearing body armor and other protective gear. We’re working on devices that’ll make it possible for them to dissipate heat to recover from periods of activity and high temperatures more rapidly.”

Heller adds that he and Grahn are also exploring other ways in which CoreControl can be used in medicine.

“Right now we’re working with multiple sclerosis patients who are extremely temperature sensitive,” Heller says. “In high temperatures, they lose the ability to function. As the temperature goes up, they can no longer walk or use their limbs. By enabling them to extract heat, [patients] can function.”

Grahn adds that while they “can’t cure [multiple sclerosis], we can provide a way of reducing the symptoms of heat sensitive components.”

According to the New York Times article, another advantage to CoreControl is that, unlike traditional methods of cooling the body, such as sticking one’s hand into a bucket of ice water, CoreControl enlarges the blood vessels to help prevent vacoconstriction — a phenomenon that causes the body to think that it needs to retain heat when exposed to extreme cold.

This advantage would permit CoreControl’s rapid cooling to rejuvenate a tired and overheated body, Grahn says. With the help of CoreControl, “athletes [will be able to] run faster and jump higher.”