When summer’s muggy heatwaves arrive, are women and men impacted differently?

Mariska Andrade (BSc ’23) is determined to find out.

The Health Sciences master’s student is digging deep into cell biology to find out whether women or men suffer more when temperatures rise and why.

Andrade is examining how estrogen and progesterone — predominantly female hormones also found in men at lower levels — impact body temperature and heat shock proteins, which protect cells from heat and other stressors.

“This research is crucial not only for advancing our understanding of female physiology, which is an area historically underrepresented compared to male physiology, but also for reevaluating or modifying treatments for heat stroke and other heat-related illnesses in vulnerable populations,” she says.

Andrade is conducting an experiment that compares how genes that respond to heat stress work in men, women who are not taking birth control pills, and women who are.

“Body temperature changes throughout a typical menstrual cycle such that, in the first half of the cycle, body temperature is about .5 C lower compared to the latter half of the cycle,” Andrade says, adding she’s curious to know if these cyclical changes make a difference.

The use of birth control provides high levels of these hormones artificially, which may also affect the amount of heat shock proteins in the body, she says.

Part of the research involves participants sitting in an infrared sauna located in the lab of Andrade’s supervisor, Professor of Kinesiology Toby Mündel.

Mündel says that, in conventional saunas, people heat up as air temperature increases.

“Some people find the temperature in traditional saunas stifling, as the sauna heats the air first and then the body, whereas an infrared sauna operates at a lower temperature but directly heats the body using more penetrating light,” says the Canada Research Chair in Extreme Human Environments.

Andrade’s work builds on existing research that found gene activity in participants was high after emerging from a sauna, remaining high one hour after the heat exposure.

This suggests that cells were trying to repair themselves from damage done by the high temperatures by releasing heat shock proteins, says Andrade, whose research will explore the impact on men and women separately.

To be able to carry out her research, Andrade is seeking male participants between the ages of 18 to 40, females from 18 to 30 years old with regular menstrual cycles and no birth control use and females ages 18 to 40 who are taking birth control pills.

For more information on the study, or to participate, email Andrade or Mündel.