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Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Re: Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties

#151

Post by DoreenMichele »

hx8 wrote: post #137

Is there a biological process that explains how high altitude impacts suicide rates, or are there social variables that aren't controlled for. This paper gets a lot of scrutiny, but it's been out for over a decade and hasn't been debunked or explained. I've been mulling over this one for awhile, and have had several conversations with reasonably informed individuals in related fields. There's a lot of theories, many…

There are a lot of biological processes that happen at altitude, but HN is a great place to get pilloried for speaking off the cuff about "hypotheses" of this sort.

Re: Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties

#153

Post by lp251 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #110
seltzered_ wrote: post #12

I recall seeing this article from 2014 referring to suicides in Utah ('utah paradox') and how neuroscientist Perry Renshaw was trying to link it to altitude: http://mic.com/articles/104096/there-s-a-suicide-epidemic-in... which links to another study from 2011: http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/appi.ajp.201... "Together, the stray statistics and stories about life out west tipped off Renshaw to a common…

For that to be true, you'd need to establish that blood oxygen levels differ significantly across altitude adapted individuals, and I don't believe that this is the case. Also, when I first moved from Philadelphia to a village in New Mexico at 6000', I remember reading that I should plan on a 3 phase adapative process that would take as much as 9 months to complete. This makes me give less weight to things like the 2…

Did you ever fully acclimate? After 3 years at 6000 ft I still had lower blood oxygen than at sea level. (per apple watch, so take that with a grain of salt)

Re: Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties

#154

Post by CaptainNegative »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #147

Median household income seems like a pretty bullshit metric when talking about parts of the country where it's not uncommon for multi-million dollar ridgetop mansions to coexist with gross poverty. All of the high elevation country I've visited (disregarding obvious outliers like Denver and the front range) had a few things in common: very wealthy people enjoyed having homes there and the rest of the locals were dirt…

Why is this a bad case for using the median, which is normally pretty resilient to influence from outliers?

Re: Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties

#155

Post by callalex »

thephyber wrote: post #148
jskrablin wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a rural area and air here is significantly better than smog filled and ozone enriched air in the city I used to live in. Not to mention the lack of winter fog that can linger around for weeks at times. And that's excluding the light and noise pollution that are inevitable in urban areas. Yeah, living in a rural area is pure hell.

What do you believe Ozone is?!?

Deeply toxic to human lungs.

Re: Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties

#156

Post by aorloff »

JohnDeHope wrote: post #150
jddj wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that warrants a citation

This makes me think. What if there was a database of conjectures. Each has an id number. The database could link to all sorts of media, scientific studies, etc. supporting or disputing each conjecture. Then you could just give the id number and folks would also get all the pro and con material they might like. Even things like "the earth is a sphere" could link to educational videos and whatnot. And even things like…

Its called reddit

Re: Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties

#157

Post by gregw134 »

JohnDeHope wrote: post #150
jddj wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that warrants a citation

This makes me think. What if there was a database of conjectures. Each has an id number. The database could link to all sorts of media, scientific studies, etc. supporting or disputing each conjecture. Then you could just give the id number and folks would also get all the pro and con material they might like. Even things like "the earth is a sphere" could link to educational videos and whatnot. And even things like…

Sounds like Snopes.com

Re: Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties

#158

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

lp251 wrote: post #153
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For that to be true, you'd need to establish that blood oxygen levels differ significantly across altitude adapted individuals, and I don't believe that this is the case. Also, when I first moved from Philadelphia to a village in New Mexico at 6000', I remember reading that I should plan on a 3 phase adapative process that would take as much as 9 months to complete. This makes me give less weight to things like the 2…

Did you ever fully acclimate? After 3 years at 6000 ft I still had lower blood oxygen than at sea level. (per apple watch, so take that with a grain of salt)

I haven't measured my blood oxygen, alas.

I've been here 4+ years now, and other than being 4 years older and just coming out of a sedentary 3 year period, I notice zero effects of living (and running, cycling, swimming, hiking) at altitude. Can't say any more than that really.

Re: Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties

#159

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

JohnDeHope wrote: post #150
jddj wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that warrants a citation

This makes me think. What if there was a database of conjectures. Each has an id number. The database could link to all sorts of media, scientific studies, etc. supporting or disputing each conjecture. Then you could just give the id number and folks would also get all the pro and con material they might like. Even things like "the earth is a sphere" could link to educational videos and whatnot. And even things like…

It's not particularly good, but you could look at procon.org

I think there are a few other similar sites.

Re: Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties

#160

Post by foogazi »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #104
irrational wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are Denver and SLC considered remote? My own city is about at sea level, but by car the next closest cities are 3 hours to the north, 6 hours to the east, and 9 hours to the south. I’d say we are more remote, despite being at a much lower elevation.

Denver and SLC are reasonably big cities. If you need, for example, a big-city childrens' hospital, they have them. Then you start to drive out of town, and there is N O T H I N G. I mean, from SLC, there's Ogden and Provo, maybe Park City. From Denver, there's Colorado Springs and Fort Collins. Once you get past those, it's a long way to the next anywhere. So are they isolated? Depends on how you define isolation. D…

Maybe isolation would be another variable that correlates to extreme altitude regions
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