Question: I've noticed that you have been working on high altitudes, how has this affected you?

Damian Bailey answered on 17 Jun 2013:

This has had a hugely positive effect on me. I work at high-altitude to understand what happens to our brains when they’re challenged by less oxygen which is what happens when you travel ino “thin air”! It’s what we call a model and helps me understand diseases of the brain in humans living at sea-level (for example, stroke and even ageing since we can’t get as much oxygen to our brains the older we get!). What I loove about working at high-altitude is getting up in the morning and looking out of my tent, seeing the clouds thousands of feet below me like a blanket of cotton wool and the sun shining on the snow! Compare that to waking up and looking out of your bedroom window to be greeted (yet again!) by the rain and a grey dull sky (miserable!). So part of it is that I’m free with Nature and it’s a real adventure as you can see in some of my photos; it’s like being Indiana Jones and I can push myself too after the science when we decide to summit! But there’s a downside too! This lack of oxygen to the brain can make you feel sick, something we call acute mountain sickness and I research that too. But people forget that us scientists can also get sick and guess what? I get super-sick! So I end up being a volunteer for some of my own studies though we still don’t know exactly what causes it and how to totally cure it!