Episode #1
Fit for Duty: Why a Firefighter's Heart Is the Real Emergency ft. Dr. David Hostler
When a firefighter dies in the line of duty, what do you picture? A collapse, flames, a roof coming down? You're probably picturing it wrong. This week on Bulls Rise, we finally got him in the chair. Dr. Dave Hostler, UB Distinguished Professor, Chair of our Department of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, director of the CRESE Lab, and the reason this podcast studio exists at all. Before any of that, he was a firefighter, a paramedic, and a hazmat technician, and his research has shaped national standards for how the fire service protects its own. Here's what he shared with us: The leading cause of on duty firefighter death isn't burns or trauma. It's the heart, and cancer may now be the number one killer of all, driven by exposures the fire service didn't understand until recently. He walked us through what actually happens physiologically from the moment the alarm sounds to the moment a firefighter is carrying 45 to 75 pounds of gear into heat that would end most of us. He shared a finding from his own lab that firefighters at the highest risk aren't the least fit ones, they're the average ones, fit enough to work hard but not fit enough to recover fast. And he was honest about something rare: his own past research on cognition under stress was likely measuring the wrong thing, and his newest work is correcting it in real time. He also opened up about September 11th, 2001, a day he spent in Manhattan as a young paramedic researcher, and a story it took him 25 years to be ready to tell. On the lighter side, we got his training philosophy (the only bad workout is the one you skipped), his hot take on CrossFit, his case for pour over coffee over French press, and his unshakeable, controversial stance that there is no good pizza in Buffalo, New York. When asked how he rises, Dave kept it simple: think big and do it. Full episode now available on all platforms. Link in bio.
