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Students engage in ground-breaking research, analysis |
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Thursday, 10 April 2008 |
 | Gaskill
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by BRANDON BROWN
News Reporter
Although the frenetic action that defined the Holmes Convocation Center during basketball season has come to an end, students and professors within the Department of Health, Leisure and Exercise Science (HLES) are keeping up the fast-paced action through advanced research and development.
Since
moving into the Holmes Convocation Center in 2000, HLES has garnered
the attention of some big corporations in search of new studies on
their respective products.
Despite
boasting five degree programs, a graduate degree program and being a
prolific department in terms of published work, Dr. Paul Gaskill,
chairperson of the HLES department, feels they are still flying under
the radar.
“In a lot of ways, we are a hidden jewel on campus,” Gaskill said.
 Students participate in a study of nutraceuticals in the exercise science department to determine the effects of certain vitamins on human physical performance for the Ken Cooper Institute. Photo by Alisha Park
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Dr. David C. Nieman of HLES recently completed a two-year study for the U.S. Army concerning the
effects that a substance called quercetin has on the immune function of the human body.
Gaskill said it was determined that quercetin, which is naturally found in the skins of blueberries,
grapes and apples, greatly reduces the chance of a negative immune response when the subject is
pushed to the brink of exhaustion – a condition soldiers fighting overseas are often prone to.
In light of the Army study, Quercegen Pharma and Coca-Cola presented HLES with a grant worth $1.6
million this past fall, which will fund the study intended to test the effects of quercetin through blood
samples given by 500 test subjects from the university and the local community, Gaskill said.
Each test subject is awarded $300 from the grant fund for his or her participation in the quercetin
research, Gaskill said.
Ironically, the quercetin research has brought the department together with one of its former and most
celebrated test subject: Lance Armstrong.
Armstrong is on the research board for a company called NutraSun, which happens to be a subsidiary
to Quercegen Pharma.
“At some point, we’d like to get Lance back to campus to recognize his contributions to the world of
sport,” Gaskill said. “It’s more probable than it ever was before.”
Gaskill said Appalachian State is one of the few universities participating in quercetin studies but is “at
the forefront of quercetin research” on a national and international level.
HLES is also currently conducting a study for a company called Power Plate that supplies a product
that uses body vibration training, Gaskill said.
Power Plate claims if an individual trains on a vibrating surface that his or her muscular system will
respond to the vibration in a way that allows the muscles to hypertrophy faster, Gaskill said.
Gaskill said the department was given three Power Plate machines along with a $30,000 grant to
compare the effectiveness of exercises in a vibrating and nonvibrating environment.
Gaskill said HLES is the first department on campus to get a National Institute of Health study, which
is currently halfway completed and consists of analyzing heart attacks in rats by pinpointing the first
heart muscle that fails.
 Graduate exercise science major Melissa E. Adelstein analyzes blood and records data for the Western Dot Blotting study which uses gel electrophoresis to detect a specific protein. Photo by Alisha Park
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“This is the only place in the world that a study like this is happening,” Gaskill said.
Since moving from Broome-Kirk gym, which Gaskill referred to as the “bowels of the earth,” students
have able to interact with medical-quality resources.
Michael A. Israetel, an exercise science graduate student, has recently been experimenting with the
body density assessment, where a subject is weighed under water to get an accurate measure of body
fat.
Israetel said the procedure is “the gold standard of body composition measurement.”
Much of the data obtained through the students’ studies are often compared to the two cadavers that
the department uses in anatomy classes.
Some graduate students are doing research that requires test subjects to have a high threshold for
pain.
Exercise science graduate student Michael J. Cavill is using a muscle biopsy needle to extract a
chunk of muscle out of the subject’s quadriceps in order to produce a cross-section of the muscle
fibers for comparison.
HLES has proposed a point-of-order that wound up on Appalachian State’s federal agenda.
Gaskill is in the process of writing a grant for $1.2 million regarding childhood obesity. Gaskill said the
grant would serve 300 to 400 children at dozens of sites within the community.
“We’re all part of the preventative model, and we’re excited about that,” Gaskill said.
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