I wonder if they're confusing the cause and effect. Do people who live above 8k feet not die of heart disease or do people with heart disease find it too difficult to live above 8k feet so only people without heart disease live above 8k feet? I live at 7200 feet and I know several people who have moved to lower altitudes because it's "too hard to breath" here.
High Altitude Living – 8,000 ft and above (2021)
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Re: High Altitude Living – 8,000 ft and above (2021)
#32If anyone watched that movie, Elevation[0], the “line of death” was 8,000 feet.
Re: High Altitude Living – 8,000 ft and above (2021)
#33> The best defense is to start at 5,000 feet and stay there for 3 days, drinking water like crazy and resting. Then, come up to the higher elevation and give yourself a day or two to adjust. That usually works. This is crazy to me as I usually only get 1 acclimation night in before going up. I’m curious how people can find their limits / needs?
I met Charles Snead Houston, who lead the first two American attempts on K2 and became a doctor. (He fell the furthest in "The Belay", the most famous belay in mountaineering history.)
He asked me to explain my work on card shuffling, so we traded. He taught me about altitude sickness, for which he was the foremost expert. I then read his books before my own mountaineering, and his advice worked for me.
In a nutshell, where you sleep matters. 7,000' is free, and a conservative pace is to sleep 1,000' feet higher each night. (Good luck finding a Kilimanjaro ascent that climbs that slowly, but have you met anyone who was comfortable at the summit?)
My wife's brother lives at 10,000'. As it happens the last hotel is at 8,500'. One night does the trick for her.
Re: High Altitude Living – 8,000 ft and above (2021)
#34Just don't try to have a baby up there.
Re: High Altitude Living – 8,000 ft and above (2021)
#35Just don't try to have a baby up there.
Why not?
Re: High Altitude Living – 8,000 ft and above (2021)
#36I wonder if they're confusing the cause and effect. Do people who live above 8k feet not die of heart disease or do people with heart disease find it too difficult to live above 8k feet so only people without heart disease live above 8k feet? I live at 7200 feet and I know several people who have moved to lower altitudes because it's "too hard to breath" here.
I visited Mexico City a couple weeks ago and it is at 7200 feet. As I got off the plane I was gasping a bit and I woke up 3 or 4 times the first night gasping for air. I didn't have any problems visiting Denver at 5000 feet in years past but I was absolutely feeling it at 7200. I didn't stay long enough to see if I would acclimate as I continued to feel bad and returned home early.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Mexico City and SMA, and the first time was definitely the worst; lots of shortness of breath and walking seemed much harder there than other places. My 75 year-old mother had no issues at all when she came to visit tho
Re: High Altitude Living – 8,000 ft and above (2021)
#37As a child I lived for two years at ~11k ft (La Paz, Bolivia). I can vouch for the impact of both Acute Mountain Sickness and the sun at that elevation.
I first learned about La Paz and its even higher-elevation sibling city El Alto from this video [1] about their new cable car transportation network [1][2]. I then spent a few hours on Google Maps and Youtube looking at El Alto up close, what a fascinating and different world up there.
Re: High Altitude Living – 8,000 ft and above (2021)
#38I am originally from the Himalayas (Garhwal specifically), although not quite as high as in the article, my village is at 5000 ft and damn did I have a shock when I took my desi friends up there (desi means people from the Indo-Gangetic plains, I unfortunately had to come to New Delhi for college and you can imagine the contrast!). While in Delhi, I am one of the more unathletic nerds, but as soon as we were in the m…
I really do wonder how big of that is a genetic factor and how big just being more acclimated to the altitude and the region?
Re: High Altitude Living – 8,000 ft and above (2021)
#39On the contrary, do people who live high above for years have any trouble when coming back down?
Re: High Altitude Living – 8,000 ft and above (2021)
#40I grew up in Memphis TN but lived in Boulder CO for a few years. I worked at a hospital in both cities; my job was checking people into the ER.
In Memphis, I’d probably see 7-10 heart related issues a day, with about 2-3 of them being actual heart attacks. Every single day.
By contrast, in Boulder I saw maybe 1-2 heart attacks a year.
It was absolutely astounding. Now, there could be some confounding variables like income/education/exercise/diet. But like another poster said, high altitude places seem to bring out more activity in us.