Altitude and Your Body
Ice climbing 2020- ig @rallyrae
Recently I spent 9 days up in the mountains in celebration of the New Year and enjoying various outdoor activities. Living at 6,000’ I generally do well when I go up in elevation. This time around I noticed that I had a headache and felt a little off on the first day as my body adjusted to the new elevation. While upslope I read a great article from Dr. Peter Hackett of the Ridgeway Institute for Altitude Medicine, and Dr. Andrew Subudhi of Colorado Department of Human Physiology and Nutrition. It reminded me of several ways to help deal with the effects of mountain sickness.
Mountain sickness can feel like a hangover and begins to set in around 4-12 hours after gaining elevation, and usually resolves after 24 hours. Generally, 25-30 percent of people will feel the affects if they are coming from sea level. One way to make mountain sickness worse is through hard physical exertion, due to fatigue and dehydration immediately after you arrive. “When you’re exercising, your body is wanting to consume oxygen. And that’s a scarce resource, you’re pushing the system further that’s it wants to be pushed.”
This is in part due to the thinner air and reduced oxygen levels, so your breathing more at high altitude. While doing so you will lose moisture from your respiratory track and need more fluid to off set the loss. Good rules of thumb to follow is no more than one glass of wine or two beers for the first couple of days as your body is adjusting to the new elevation.
Both doctors in this article did agree that Tylenol and Advil can help in addressing the symptoms of altitude sickness. But remember if the symptoms do not improve in the first 24 hours you should go back to lower elevations.
One awesome item to note, that I had not read before is that, once acclimatized, and returning to lower elevations, your body will maintain the acclimatization for up to two weeks. So, train high and race low. Follow this link to read the article in its entirety.
image from globaltraveler.com