RESEARCH graduate Steve Gowling has completed a gruelling trek to the Himalayas and believes acclimatisation training at a North-East university helped support him on the expedition.

Mr Gowling completed his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in physiology at Sunderland University in 2013.

He returned to campus to access support with acclimatisation and nutrition strategies before the high altitude trek over 17 days to Mount Everest Base Camp, in Nepal.

Using the physiological labs in the Sport and Exercise Science department, Mr Gowling trained under hypoxic (low oxygen) conditions that he would expect to encounter once his adventure began.

The trek was also an opportunity for him to collect his own data, extending the research he completed during his Masters degree, which looked at the relationship between changes in heart-rate variability and the development of high-altitude sickness during an ascent of Mont Blanc.

Mr Gowling’s research attempted to identify measures that could spot early warning signs of those at risk of high-altitude sickness and reduce its debilitating impact for those who work at altitude.

A part-time academic tutor at the university, Mr Gowling, of Seaham, who also used the expedition to mark his own milestone 50th birthday, said: “To have these accessible lab facilities on your doorstep was of huge benefit to me. It offered the opportunity for hypoxic preconditioning.

“When you trek to Base Camp the oxygen availability is lower than at sea-level, so over five days staff in the department were able to simulate similar hypoxic conditions in the lab to stimulate some physiological responses that you would experience during ascent in the mountains.”