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Does air conditioning in accommodation impact acclimatisation in a military setting?
  1. Victoria Kinkaid and
  2. S Makin
  1. DMS, Defence Medical Services, Lichfield, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Victoria Kinkaid, Medical Centre, Aldershot Garrison, Aldershot, UK; vkinkaid11{at}hotmail.co.uk

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Acclimatisation is the process of physiologically adapting the body to cope with higher ambient temperatures. The British military frequently deploys from temperate climates to diverse hot locations, including jungles and deserts, where acclimatisation programmes are required prior to conducting training. When completed, service personnel (SP) are theoretically at lower risk of heat illness due to physiological adaptation to heat.1

A question posed to medical officers in hot climates is ‘does sleeping in air conditioning (AC) impact the acclimatisation process?’ It may be argued that AC could adversely impact the acclimatisation process, as SP sleep in ambient temperatures and therefore their bodies do not adapt. However, a widely accepted risk factor for heat …

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Footnotes

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  • Collaborators N/A.

  • Contributors The letter was jointly planned and researched by both VK and SM, it was then written by VK and reviewed by SM.

  • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.