Thermal strain during exercise in the heat; methods of evaluation

Climate change inflicts an ever-increasing incidence of elevated ambient conditions on those undertaking physical activity. Human thermoregulation acts to protect one from dangerous levels of heat storage. However, this is not always successful, ultimately resulting in heat illness and potential morbidity and mortality. By understanding the thermal strain, this risk can be more successfully mitigated and thus researchers continually seek to identify the conditions in which heat becomes detrimental and the most efficient strategies for mitigating these risks, with the aim of preventing heat illness or dampening the degradation in endurance performance. The methods by which researchers look to answer these questions however may not always be appropriately selected for the real-world situation for which they are intended, lacking reliability, sensitivity or representativeness. [...]