Stress and Inflammatory Markers: The Impact on Military Physical Performance
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Military personnel are an occupational group susceptible to high levels of stress. Chronic stress can lead to elevated levels of cortisol and pro‐inflammatory makers, and recently published studies have suggested a potential negative relationship between levels of pro‐inflammatory markers and physical performance. The purpose of this study was to examine if a relationship exists between inflammatory makers and physical performance in a military cohort. Participants were male (n=133, age 36±11 years, height 175.8±6.2cm, weight 85.7±14.6kg, BMI 28±4 kg/m 2 ) and female (n=87, age 37±9 years, height 162.6±5.8cm, weight 69.0±11.8kg, BMI 26±4 kg/m 2 ) Canadian Armed Forces military personnel. A blood sample was collected in the morning between 8–10 am, and analyzed for levels of cortisol, CRP and IL‐18. Performance was evaluated on six military specific tasks; sandbag fortification, escape to cover, picking and digging, pickets and wire carry, stretcher carry and vehicle extrication, and total performance was calculated based on percentile scores of performance on each of the six tasks. A partial correlation was used to correct for BMI and age. In the male group, a negative correlation between CRP levels and total performance was observed (r=−0.25, p<0.01). A weak, but significant negative correlations between CRP levels and performance on single tasks; picking and digging (r= −0.19, p=0.04), stretcher carry (r=−0.23, p=0.01) and sandbag fortification (r=−0.20, p=0.03) was also observed. In the female group, a negative correlation was observed between CRP levels and total performance (r=−0.31, p<0.01). A negative correlation between CRP levels and performance on the picking and digging task (r=−0.23, p=0.05), stretcher carry (r=−0.23, p=0.05) and vehicle extrication (r=−0.24, p=0.04) was also found. To determine the impact of levels of stress and inflammatory markers on performance outcome, a linear regression analysis was performed, including factors of morphology and physical fitness previously recognized to have an effect on performance on these specific tasks. The linear regression analysis showed that none of the stress or inflammatory markers were included in the final model predicting total performance outcome in either the male or female group. Although a correlative relationship between levels of stress and pro‐inflammatory markers and performance on military specific tasks could be observed, we did not find evidence of levels of stress and pro‐inflammatory markers having a negative effect on total performance outcome on six military specific physical performance tasks.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".