Brock University Distinguished Professor Recognized as One of Canada’s Top Pediatric Exercise Physiologists
Ever notice how little children sweat? Or no matter how much they exercise, their muscles don’t grow as much as adults do?
As one of the few pediatric exercise physiologists in Canada, Bareket Falk has spent nearly four decades studying children’s physiological responses to exercise, leading to significant and impactful research outcomes. Her research lab is the only one in Canada that focuses on neuromuscular function in children.
The Brock University Kinesiology Professor was among 10 faculty members awarded the new honorary title of Distinguished Professor by the Office of the President.
Falk’s career started by examining the thermoregulatory response to exercise in children and adults, and how it changes as children grow.
Children don’t thermoregulate their body temperature like adults do, she says, with the most prominent difference being that children sweat significantly less than adults.
When the human body experiences heat, sweat is released, creating a film of water on the skin that evaporates and cools the body.
Evaporation is the most efficient way to dissipate heat, she says, so many people thought children’s thermoregulation was deficient because they sweat less.
“Turns out they’re not. They just thermoregulate differently,” says Falk. “Children are good at dry heat loss — mainly cooling the body through increasing blood flow to skin.”
Another area of Falk’s research examines how exercise affects bone.
Bone-related issues, such as osteoporosis, are often associated with older adults, especially women; however, it’s known now that osteoporosis is a pediatric condition manifested in old age.
Unlike adults, whose bones deteriorate as they age, children’s bones grow in length, thickness and density as they develop, and there are various ways to make them stronger, says Falk.
“One way is nutrition, but exercise is also important, and some would say even more important to increasing bone strength,” she says. “Exercise and nutrition can slow down bone deterioration in adults, but the only time we can make our bones stronger is during the growing years, particularly around the pubertal period.”
Most recently, Falk’s research has focused on examining how muscles respond to exercise and training, particularly resistance training in children.
A common misunderstanding is that resistance training might stunt growth, she says. If done properly, however, it can be beneficial for children’s growth and development.
The effects of training are different for adults and children, though.
“Even though both children and adults can increase their strength with resistance training, children experience little or no hypertrophy, which is increased muscle mass,” she says. “So, if not hypertrophy, there must be neurological changes.”
Over the past few years, advanced techniques have allowed researchers like Falk to more closely examine how the nervous system makes children’s muscles work. Many techniques are noninvasive and can precisely identify and monitor individual motor units within muscles.
“Children don’t activate their muscles in the same way adults do, which partly explains why they are not as strong,” she says.
Falk is interested in answering why there’s this difference. She says it could be that children don’t activate the same amount or proportion of muscle or that the frequency at which they activate their muscle fibres is lower.
“We don’t have the answers yet, but this is the path we’re on,” she says.
Falk’s long-term goal is to establish a comprehensive understanding of the development of muscle control mechanisms, which has important implications for performance and is instrumental in developing age-specific interventions to improve performance in physical rehabilitation and in treating neuromuscular diseases.
As former Chair for Brock’s Centre for Bone and Muscle Health, Falk is passionate about knowledge translation and teaching others about her and other researchers’ work.
She finds great joy in teaching students at all levels and mentoring graduate students. Eight of her past graduate students hold faculty positions in Canada or internationally and she maintains ongoing collaboration with many of them.
Falk is included in Stanford University’s list of the world’s top two per cent of scientists with the most citations. She served as the Editor-in-Chief of Pediatric Exercise Science journal for nine years, has nearly 300 publications in both scientific and lay literature, and has delivered more than 50 invited scientific lectures worldwide.
“I’m proud I’ve been able to make an impact within the field of pediatric physiology and to make this field important,” says the proud mother of three boys.
While the Distinguished Professor designation is an individual honour, Falks says her research accomplishments could not have been possible without the support of her colleagues and students.