Stoffregen’s study finds link between body sway and nausea

StoffregenT-2007Pre-bout standing body sway in boxers predicts the feeling of sickness or nausea after the bout, School of Kinesiology researchers found in a study published Oct. 3 in PLOS ONE.
Thomas Stoffregen, director of the Affordance Perception-Action Laboratory, and his team measured body sway — defined as the slight postural movements made by an individual to maintain a balanced position — of 15 adult boxers before warming-up for a bout and after the warm-up session, immediately before they entered the ring.
After the bout, each boxer was asked whether or not they felt sick.
The study found that those with more body sway before the bout reported feeling sick after the bout, win or lose.
“We naturally think that everyone is the ‘same’ before competition and that it is how hard you’re hit during the bout that determines how ‘sick’ a boxer feels afterwards,” said Stoffregen. “However, in this case, we found that movement before the bout is actually what predicts a feeling of sickness afterward.”


A physician, looking for symptoms of a concussion, studied each of the 15 boxers afterwards and found none suffered a concussion.
Concussions are often associated with nausea, and boxing is typically linked to concussions and nausea.
“But we found that while a blow to the head was enough to make you sick, it wasn’t enough to give you a concussion,” said Stoffregen. “This study raises the possibility that we can actually predict who is more susceptible to concussions simply by measuring body sway.”
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