Regional Flow Responses to Exercise

Abstract

To answer the question made in the introduction of this article, it must be said that the regional blood flow during exercise increases or decreases depending on the metabolic level required by the organ involved or not in the exercise; this mechanism is modulated by the interaction of local and central activations that must automatically take into account the solution of the following equation: Flow = Pressure/ Resistances. It is evident that no single, dominant exercise stimulus can explain the control of regional blood flow; in fact: (1) chemical and mechanical reflexes originating in active skeletal muscle might trigger responses that could provide the necessary regulatory feedback; (2) centrally generated motor signals from the cerebral cortex and spinal cord might provide the necessary feed-forward control.