Member profile: keeping sooners healthy for nearly a decade.

E. Randy Eichner, M.D., FACSM, can't quite pinpoint when or why he was drawn to medicine. The paths toward hematology and sports medicine are a lot clearer, however: Exhibiting an eye for pragmatism that guides his research to this day, Randy says he was drawn to hematology "because the best teachers in med school were hematologists." As for sports medicine, he explains, "I started out researching anemias and bleeding in runners and swimmers; when I began presenting it at sports medicine meetings, I found I liked that crowd. I was also an avid runner, a recreational marathoner, back then."

A Bit of Backstory 

Eichner, 65, was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and raised in south Texas. He attended Johns Hopkins medical school and divided his residency between there and the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1962, he married his wife, Donna, who is an oncology nurse clinician and dedicated runner. "She's faster than me now," Randy laments. They have three grown children.

After a fellowship in hematology at the University of Washington, Randy spent two years at the U.S. Public Health Service in Atlanta. Today he is a full-time academician at the Oklahoma University medical school. In football months, Randy spends the bulk of his time on the OU campus, where he has served for the past eight years as the team internist for some 500 varsity athletes. He regularly travels with the football team.

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In the off months, Randy's work is centered in the health campus hospital, where he can be found holding clinics and lectures on various varsity athlete medical problems, performing hematology consults or making rounds on the oncology ward, where he regularly attends. Eichner divides his time evenly between seeing patients and doing field research on metabolic imbalances, currently in football with the Gatorade Sports Science Institute. He has been a board member there for 15 years, serving on the Sports Medicine Review Board for the last 12 or so.

"Huge Men are Heat Bombs"

For some time now, Eichner and his colleagues at GSSI have been examining the roots of heat cramping in athletes. The first phase of this research allowed them to determine who is most vulnerable. "It definitely travels with salty sweating," he says. They also learned cramp-prone players tend to be lean, fit, intense, explosive pacesetters on the field. John Stofan presented this first study at ACSM last year; the manuscript has been submitted for publication.

Last June brought phase two: Why these athletes? Randy et al. have submitted this work, but it has yet to be presented or published. Notably, theirs was the first metabolic research conducted right on the playing field. The study used NASA's technology for monitoring the core temperatures of astronauts: a "radiopill." The player swallows the temperature probe, allowing him to continue practice as normal while clinicians obtain data about his body temperature with wireless technology. "How fast they heated up surprised everybody," he reports. "Within 20 minutes they'd gone from baseline to 102 degrees."

For obvious reasons, it was important that Eichner's research avoid disrupting the regular rhythms of football practice. The radiopill approach reflects a practicality first and foremost. "I'm not a molecular biologist," he quips. "We try to keep it practical and appeal to coaches." You can tell by the heading of the medicine Grand Rounds talk he gave on February 25: "Football Medicine and Sooner Magic: Lessons from Onfield Research." If Randy can prevent heat-stroke and cramping or even obtain an earlier diagnosis, he believes the cost of the pills to the OU football team is money well spent. He mentions future applications for the radiopill in warm climate running, such as the Falmouth Road Race, notorious for seeing body temperatures of up to 110 degrees.

Not one to inflate himself or his research with hyperbolic pronouncements, Randy is nevertheless disarmingly quick-witted. And there are passion and expertise that make themselves apparent after speaking with him for even a few minutes--but why stop there? Eichner can hold forth for hours in fascinating detail about the intricacies and contradictions in hematology and metabolic imbalance. He seems naturally drawn to uncertainty in a way that suggests an urge to problem solve over any urge to assert one's ego. He will tell you when the studies aren't yet there to support a hunch; he freely offers what he doesn't know. He's simply interested in carefully reasoned analysis undergirded by sound research. This often brings out his frankness and good humor.

It's not surprising then, that Randy is a prolific writer. He has written over 800 of his weekly city newspaper column on health and fitness. In addition, he writes a monthly column for Sports Medicine Digest. There are over 50 of these to date. He serves on the editorial board of Running & FitNews, which he came to by way of AMAA in the late 80s.

On Board at AMAA

Eichner joined AMAA to run Boston after missing the qualifying time by :44. He was soon giving occasional lectures at meetings in D.C. and Boston such as last year's presentation on hyponatremia. Like just about every M.D. who has come to know the organization, Randy has kind words for AMAA. "It's a good organization. It keeps folks active and fit and healthy." Randy echoes the view of other health care providers: We as a culture are "eating too much and moving too little." AMAA, he says, "keeps people moving, keeps runners running."

These days, Randy says his hobbies are running, reading and writing. He will give a president's lecture at ACSM in June: "Muscle Cramping in the Arena: Causes, Cures and Controversy."

"I'm slowing down as a runner now," he admits, "but I'm still trying to hang in there." And then, out pops the Quotable Eichner: "Better slow than dead." This kind of earthy candor is precisely why it is not a meaningless formality, but a literal truth, to say that one has had the pleasure of his company.

Jeff Venables is the editor of Running & FitNews.