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Asked by 12ceharland to Alan, Emma on 17 Jun 2013.
Question: What effects can altitude have on you? And why?
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Alan Richardson answered on 17 Jun 2013:
It depends on how high the altitude you are going to is.
First if we say 3500m, so some main cities in South America. When you arrive at altitude you will notice an increase in your breathing rate and heart rate. After an hour or so you may feel dizzy and sick. Often people report feeling very light-headed with a very severe headache. After a few days most people acclimatise to this kind of altitude. However, some do not and can get worse resulting in fluid building up either on your lungs or brain. These people would require medical treatment. Have a look at my blog with lots more details about it on http://uobperu2013.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/high-altitude-health-advice_16.html
If we choose to go somewhere higher e.g. dropped by helicopter onto the top of everest (8850m) you would be dead within 10mins as you simply could not get enough oxygen to your cells fast enough.
That is what makes it so fascinating – How do humans adapt so that we can get to the top of Everest if we acclimatise over weeks of training….. What happens to our bodies.
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Emma Ross answered on 17 Jun 2013:
As we go higher, the pressure of the atmosphere pressing down on us gets less. This means there is less pressure ‘driving’ oxygen into our blood when we breathe it in. That is why we say there is less oxygen at high altitude. There’s not actually ‘less’ but the pressure gradient which forces it out of air and into our blood in the lungs is not as much. Anyway, this means that we don’t carry as much oxygen in our blood, and the higher we go, the less oxygen is carried in our blood, which means we have less oxygen circulating around our body for cellular respiration (keeping cells alive).
Our first responses to having less oxygen is to breathe faster (to get more air in) and for our heart rate to increase (to pump blood more quickly around the body).
Other high altitude symptoms are headaches, dizziness, sickness and tiredness.
The good news is that the more slowly you climb to high altitude, and the longer you stay at high altitude the better you cope with these symptoms, and eventually they wear off, as your body becomes adapted to cope with less oxygen, like making more red blood cells so that more oxygen can be transported to our cells.
They call altitude above 8000 metres ‘the death zone’ as the pressure is so low up he, very little oxygen can get into the body, and your body tissues start breaking down. You can only stay up this high for a very little time before you become very ill.
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