Physical exhaustion and immune system

Stress, sleep deprivation, nutrition and exercise have all been shown to affect the immune system. Few studies, if any, have used RAAM, as a model to study the effect of physical exhaustion on the immune system. My goal is to measure all the different immune cells (T, B and NK cells subsets) before, during and after the race, by using the Flow Cytometry technique. This study won’t be cumbersome for me during the race, because only one blood drawn will be done per day and be shipped to my lab for processing. The data generated by this study can be very interesting, so I’m fine being a rat lab for once.