Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
From laboratory to the mountains and back again
John O’Hara will summarise his work evaluating the effects of ingesting different types of carbohydrates before and during exercise on fuel use and exercise performance. The event, entitled ‘From the Laboratory to the Mountain and back again’, will take place at Leeds Beckett’s James Graham Building, at Headingley Campus, from 6-7pm on Wednesday 10 May.
Professor O’Hara said: “From my laboratory studies at sea level I will highlight that not all types of carbohydrates are equal and that different strategies before and during exercise may be beneficial for optimal fuel use and exercise performance, as well as my work on post-exercise liver and muscle glycogen repletion for subsequent exercise performance.”
In addition, he will discuss his work which focuses on the unique data captured when taking the laboratory to the mountain to assess fuel use during exercise, which he says challenges assumptions of the existing literature on fuel use at altitude.
Professor O’Hara has been at Leeds Beckett University for almost 22 years, starting as an undergraduate student on the BSc in Sport and Exercise Science in 1995. He then went on to complete a Masters in Sport and Exercise Science, before kick-starting his academic career as a research assistant and part-time lecturer and later progressing to Principal Lecturer, achieving a Readership in 2012.
During the early part of his academic career he completed his PhD which focused on pre-exercise carbohydrate ingestion: rebound hypoglycaemia, fuel utilisation and endurance capacity in male cyclists. This research set a consistent theme of fuelling before, during and post exercise, which continues to run through his research today.
In 2011, Professor O’Hara was awarded a ‘Promising Research Fellowship’, which allowed him to develop a key research collaboration with Professor Tom Preston and Dr Douglas Morrison at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre. This enabled him to integrate the use of stable mass isotopes into his research and that of his PhD students, to assess exogenous and endogenous (liver and muscle) carbohydrate oxidation during exercise. This collaborative approach underpins his research philosophy, and has also allowed him to use magnetic resonance spectrometry and muscle biopsy techniques to evaluate the repletion of glycogen in the liver and muscle post-exercise.
An accredited sport scientist with the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences, he has led the support of several high altitude expeditions. This has included the Army’s attempt to summit Mount Everest via the West Ridge in 2006, which was led by Dave Bunting MBE. In 2013, Professor O’Hara was awarded a Research Leadership Award to develop research collaborations with Professor David Woods and the Defence Medical Services. This award allowed the evaluation of fuel use, cardiac and hormonal responses at altitude, as well as assessing the differences in physiological responses between simulated and terrestrial altitude. The success of this collaboration has more recently been played out through Professor O’Hara leading the University’s involvement in the British Services Medical Research Expedition to Dhaulagiri in 2016.