Good Health is Good Business

Pennington Biomedical Supports the U.S. Military Every Day

April 18, 2024 · Baton Rouge, LA

Since 1988, the Pennington Biomedical Research Center has supported the U.S. Military and has become the No. 1 provider of nutrition science for the Department of Defense, or DOD. Over the years, that relationship has grown to include research focused on all aspects of readiness, performance and resilience.

For more than 35 years, Pennington Biomedical and the U.S. Department of Defense have operated in a unique relationship that has resulted in support of over 150 projects and more than 130 jointly authored scientific publications.

These projects have resulted in:

Better understanding of soldiers' energy and nutrition requirements
Improvements in operational ration nutrition standards
Modification of garrison feeding to improve health during basic training
Development and dissemination of unique technology to improve the health of Soldiers and their families
Better understanding of the role of nutrition, physical activity, and sleep habits on soldier performance and resilience.

The strong history of collaboration coupled with the world-class research capabilities and facilities at Pennington Biomedical supports the Center for Military Performance & Resilience, or CMPR, which identifies novel strategies for the optimization of readiness, performance, health and resilience.

“Soldiers frequently engage in operations during which they are subjected to multiple stressors, and even a slight decrease in muscle or brain function can be life-threatening,” said Dr. Jennifer Rood, Associate Executive Director for Cores and Resources and co-director of the Center for Military Performance & Resilience. “The strong history of collaboration coupled with the world-class research capabilities and facilities at Pennington Biomedical supports a program that identifies novel strategies for the optimization of readiness, performance, health, and resilience.”

Pennington Biomedical’s long military history has led researchers to study troops in California, Colorado, Massachusetts and South Carolina as well as Norway, Israel and Kenya to evaluate heat stress, dehydration, mountain sickness, and nutrient imbalances in battlefield conditions.

This research helped develop the First Strike Bar, an energy bar that is now widely used in military combat operations. Successful programs like the Optimizing Performance for Soldiers, or OPS, research studies aim to improve health, performance and recovery on the battlefield, while the Army H.E.A.L.T.H. program put Pennington Biomedical at the forefront of behavioral technology for the Army.

The OPS research studies aimed to improve the health, performance, and recovery for U.S. Soldiers on the battlefield. Because soldiers are often unable to consume an adequate number of calories to maintain body weight during intense field work and military missions, many experience a drop in testosterone levels. This drop in testosterone can lead to a loss of muscle and problems with memory, mood and concentration, which can put soldiers' safety at risk. Through the OPS studies, researchers examined whether injections that maintained testosterone at normal levels helped prevent these negative side effects during times of calorie deficit.

The Army H.E.A.L.T.H. program empowers soldiers in healthy and safe lifestyle change to sustain healthy weight and performance on a year-round basis. This program was developed in order to promote soldier readiness, prevent unhealthy dieting practices, enhance compliance with standards specified by AR 600-9, and to improve eating, exercise, and sleep habits of the soldier and family members. Using cutting-edge technology, these website and smartphone apps incorporate comprehensive and individualized tools for nutrition, fitness, sleep, and resilience. The goal is to help soldiers stay fit at home and prepare for combat during deployment.

To date, the Army H.E.A.L.T.H. program has been used by over 15,000 men and women on active duty in the Army, its reserves and the National Guard. The programs are currently available to soldiers and families throughout the Army.

“At Pennington Biomedical, we are looking at the health of the whole soldier,” says Tiffany Stewart, Dudley & Beverly Coates Endowed Professor and co-director of the Center for Military Performance & Resilience. “We want our men and women in uniform to be ready for whatever they may face during their service, and when they return home – and that means being physically, emotionally and mentally healthy.”

Pennington Biomedical researchers are taking everything they’ve learned from working with soldiers and many of the best parts of Army H.E.A.L.T.H. and retooling them into a new app called Z!G. This app will be for the general population, who are struggling with many of the same challenges as active-duty soldiers. This includes first responders and frontline medical professionals, but also anyone who lives with high amounts of stress and uncertainty, which might be most of us.

Through collaboration with the Louisiana National Guard, or LANG, a customized version of the app has already been tested by a majority of the state’s soldiers and their family members, in all 64 Louisiana parishes.

Pennington Biomedical received a federal award of $3.6M in 2022 to establish the new Center for Military Performance and Resilience. Current center projects that are being pursued to further improve health of the American solider and Louisiana guardsmen and cadets include:

Stand Ready, which will establish connections between diet and disease with an eye on personal biochemistry and metabolic biomarkers to allow the military to optimize how individual soldiers eat.
Precision Defense, which will investigate the need for different diets for male and female soldiers to increase iron absorption, reduce reliance on muscle glycogen as fuel and minimize loss of lean muscle during strenuous military operations.
Four Pillars of Defense, which will extend a whole-health approach to Louisiana National Guard soldiers, their families and Louisiana first responders through smartphone technology focused on nutrition, fitness, sleep, mental coping and resilience training.
Aim High, which will help youth and potential military recruits, including participants in the Louisiana National Guard’s 20-week residential Youth Challenge Program, optimize nutrition, fitness, sleep, and mental resilience for the purpose of readying recruits for their job endeavors, including potentially joining the military.

For the military, helping warfighters handle operational stress is a vital part of the mission and a key to good health. Good health is also good business.

About the Pennington Biomedical Research Center

The Pennington Biomedical Research Center is at the forefront of medical discovery as it relates to understanding the triggers of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer and dementia. The Center conducts basic, clinical, and population research, and is a campus of the LSU System. The research enterprise at Pennington Biomedical includes over 530 employees within a network of 44 clinics and research laboratories, and 13 highly specialized core service facilities. Its scientists and physician/scientists are supported by research trainees, lab technicians, nurses, dietitians, and other support personnel. Pennington Biomedical is a state-of-the-art research facility on a 222-acre campus in Baton Rouge.

For more information, see www.pbrc.edu.