Exercise-induced gastrointestinal syndrome: exploration into exacerbation factors and translation into practice.

Findings from this thesis indicate that exercise stress per se rather than duration of exercise or exertional-heat stress results in perturbations to gastrointestinal functional response, specifically a reduction in gastric myoelectrical activity, a surrogate for gastric motility and orocecal transit time. Increasing exercise duration and exertional-heat stress appears to present a greater risk for gastrointestinal symptom (GIS) incidence and severity during exercise, over shorter exercise duration and ambient conditions. Though exercise stress per se results in GIS. Further, nocturnal exercise instigates greater functional perturbations (i.e., OCTT) and symptoms compared with diurnal exercise. Finally, a comprehensive individual gastrointestinal exercise assessment allows for informed identification of potential causal pathway(s) and exacerbation factors(s) of exercise-induced gastrointestinal syndrome and GIS during exercise at an individual level, providing a valuable informed individualised therapeutic intervention approach.