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Updated: Jun 6, 2026
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Tilt Testing with Combined Lower Body Negative Pressure: a "Gold Standard" for Measuring Orthostatic Tolerance
Published on: March 21, 2013
[Repeated body position change training can improve human head-down tilt tolerance]
Bin Wu1, Ping Wu, Yue-Ying Xue
1Department of Aerospace Medicine, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an 710032, China. wubinacc@sina.com
Summary
Repeated body position change training significantly improves head-down tilt tolerance by reducing symptoms and altering blood flow dynamics. This training helps restrain the headward shift of blood volume during head-down tilts.
Area of Science:
- Physiology
- Human Physiology
- Cardiovascular Physiology
Context:
- Head-down tilt (HDT) poses physiological challenges.
- Understanding tolerance to HDT is crucial for various applications.
- Previous research has explored methods to improve HDT tolerance.
Purpose:
- To investigate the efficacy of repeated body position change training.
- To verify if this training enhances head-down tilt tolerance in healthy humans.
Summary:
- Six healthy subjects underwent 9 training sessions over 11 days involving alternating head-down and head-up tilts.
- HDT tolerance was assessed before and after the training protocol.
- Post-training, subjects reported significantly lower symptom scores and showed increased heart rate changes during HDT.
Impact:
- Training led to significant improvements in HDT tolerance.
- Blood flow in the internal jugular vein, internal carotid artery, and common carotid artery showed normalized or decreasing trends during HDT post-training.
- This suggests that the training restrains the headward shift of blood volume, a key factor in improving HDT tolerance.
