Altitude sickness.... any experince of natural remedies ?

A snowHead

xyzpaul,

Your views are much the same as mine expressed yesterday.

My understanding though is that everybody should be able to aclimatise to altitude given sufficient time according to individual need and by doing the right things.

You will probably be familiar with the Sherpa mantra. No not Ommmm but:

"Slowly slowly...slowly slowly..... "

A snowHead

xyzpaul, I really don't think it is fitness, I have a 19yr old son and he usually flakes out before I do, except when we are riding bikes.

stoatsbrother, One option I have is to not go to my GP just yet but to very carefully experiment with a few of the ideas/ remedies on here.

Is there a possibility that I may have some other condition/ailment and by continuing I could be causing myself long term harm ?

Mike

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

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Useful information here: http://www.traveldoctor.co.uk/altitude.htm

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

AxsMan, agreed - I sometimes recommend people to look at that one. However, like much of the info on altitude it is chiefly geared at people who are trekking and have 12hrs+ at high altitude. There is less good info about on people who are bouncing up and down perhaps between 2000 to 3800 metres. It is interesting that although many Andean/himalayan native peoples climb and work above 5500m, I believe that (at least until they started lugging kit for westerners) their settlements where they slept were usually below 5500m.

So I think this is a terminology issue... Altitude changes and the high alpine environment (cold dry air etc) makes Micky ill, but that isnt really AMS. This fits in with Diarmuid, richjp, and xyzpaul

micky, I would be a twit to give you authorative professional advice without seeing you! However if you can normally do other sports at a high intensity simlar to other fit people of your age, hypothetically I might be relaxed about that...

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stoatsbrother, Thanks

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I would be interesting to know just how high a person could become acclimatised to, i.e. live permanently. The world's highest inhabited places are on the Tibetan plateau, at around 5200m. Above this height it is not possible for a woman to have a successful pregnancy due to the low oxygen level.

After all it is free

I have no particular expertise, but I understand that the only real cure for altitude sickness is to go lower (which is pretty natural). My only experience of it (in other people, mainly) was in Peru, where a few of our party had symptoms; we went no higher than about 15000 feet IIRC. Chewing coca leaves is sufficiently unpleasant to take one's mind off the symptoms, but I can't pretend that it did me much good, and coca tea didn't help either. Various 'remedies' are avaiable over the counter in Peru; I gather that these are pretty much mixtures of caffeine, pain killers and glucose. None of them seemed to work for those affected in our group. An anti emetic jab in the bum took one guy's mind off things for a while.

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i heartily recommend the gingko biloba at the dosage mentioned. it got me to 5600m will no altitude effects apart from shortness of breath on exertion, which is entirely normal. i was the only person out of 50 that experienced no headaches or nausea. i've been over 4000m a number of times the best i felt was with the gingko. i took it for 5 days before the trip and all the time during.

try it and see how you go.

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Apparently the level of fitness has no effect on whether you will suffer from altitude sickness.

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cathy, possibly not but I'd expect it to affect how well an individual may cope with the effects

slikedges, apparently not - not with real altitude sickness, the sort you can die from. The only way of coping is to get down the mountain to a lower altitude.

You know it makes sense.

Micky,
Like other have said it sounds like you are suffering from altitude rather than AMS. When I have done the alps in the past I haven't always had time to acclimatize. So staying at 1300-2000 m and climbing to 4000+ wasn't unusual for me. The HAFE ( google it Smile

) is common. When climbing its easier to realize when you are pushing too fast and you stop and catch your breath. The other really anoying thing about altitude response is that your fitness level has no (apparent ) bearing on it. My climbing partner who runs marathons was reduced to my slob level once we were above 3000m. I seem to recall some evidence that regular exposure to altitude can improve your response ( take 3 ski holidays and a treking summer holiday per annum for the next 5 years?? Smile

). Don't push yourself so hard when you go high, stop regularly and stay hydrated during the whole day ( don't try and go for a 2 hour thrash the mountain on the first morning without stopping for drinks). Concentrate more on bike work rather than squash? I don't think endurance exercise helps you acclimatize quicker ( it takes 7 -10 days to acclimatize IIRC) but you can cope better with the burnout pain if you are used to endurance type exercise-thats just my personal view Very Happy

.

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A snowHead

cathy, altitude sickness like most illnesses presents in a spectrum of severity. A very mild case would affect anyone hardly at all. A very severe case would knock anyone down for the count. How badly any particular person is affected by a case of arguably moderate severity will definitely depend on their physiological reserve.

A snowHead

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

slikedges, I agree with T bar. I have seen reports of parties trekking/climbing where it has been one of the more fit members who has succumbed to full-on AMS or HAPE, with less fit members being unaffected. There do seem to be genetic modifications which predispose to greater tolerance. A fitter person might be able to function better at altitude but AMS seems rather capricious in whom it affects.

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yep, fitness means nothing. in fact, the superfit sometimes try and ignore the signs and end up in a terrible condition because they try to push through it. the number of fit young men i've seem steaming past me in the himalayas only to find them at the top of the hill with a killer headache (literally!) throwing their guts up and having to descend. some people are more genetically adapted than others (ed viesturs, reinhold messner and apa sherpa for instance) but repeated exposure to altitude (proper 4000m+ altitude) doesn't make your body more used to it and therefore less likely to fall victim to HACE or HAPE. many high altiude mountaineers can find themselves suddenly struck down when they have never had a problem before. lots of sherpas get altitude sickness and they often live above 3000m.

on the subject of the nosebleeds: i get them at altitude and in deserts and i put it down to the extremely dry air.

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Hang on:) Tibetans spent their entire lives at 4-5000m with no ill effects, so surely they are "used to it". Doesn't mean they can't suffer from AMS when heading higher though.

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stoatsbrother, so if it happens that a particular individual is unlucky enough to have already developed mountain sickness, whether this individual's pre-existing physiological state is very good or rather poor will have no bearing on severity or outcome?

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It would seem logical that if someone has a severe underlying disease the outcome is likely to be worse but from what I have read it makes no difference as to whether one is sedentary or athletic to either the chances of getting it or the severity of the attack.

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T Bar, I have made no reference whatsoever to anyone's chances of getting it.

Sorry to be pedantic but the point I have made twice is simply that one's physiological state cannot but have some bearing on how one copes with an attack of a given severity (as long as at neither extreme of magnitude), which is very different from saying that one's physiological state has any bearing on how severe an attack one may be unfortunate enough to suffer.

slikedges,
I'm probably being obtuse but I dont really follow what you mean by the difference between 'coping with an attack' and a difference in severity of an attack. It is presumably the bodies inability to physiologically respond appropriatley or cope to the altered pressure that leads to the attack.

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futile argument chaps - we appear to have different terms of reference. What altitude/rate of ascent you get AMS appears not to link to pure fitness (at sea level) relative to the other people ascending, but may be improved by acclimatisation to altitude. It may well be you will get it worse if you do get it if you are unfit - I don't know, but you still have to come down... So I think slikedges argument is not hugely relevant... My feeling from previous discussions with T Bar suggest he has a rather sound background in respiratory physiology...

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T Bar, the body's inability to respond appropriately to the altitude may not be synonymous with or directly related to how fit it is, though I suppose it may in some way be to how that fitness is then able to be harnessed to cope with the pathophysiological process Confused

stoatsbrother, futile indeed. I've yet to hear of any physical illness where you won't

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Well my knowledge of respiratory physiology is very minuscule. But I did go to a talk on AMS whilst at Manang (about 4,000 metres in Nepal) prior to trekking on up to the Thorung La Pass (about 5,700 metres). The experts there from the research centre said physical fitness had no relationship whatsoever to likelihood of getting it or whether you will suffer more from the effects if you are unfit. That's the limit of my knowledge! Very Happy

if you were already ill, say with flu or something, this would undoubtedly make the experience of AMS worse but it would not make the AMS itself worse. cathy is spot on. fitness has no bearing on how likely you are to contract AMS or how severe the attack will be. none at all.

You know it makes sense.

end of

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

slikedges,
Yep, I'm not sure whether I agree or disagree with your prev. post now Laughing

A snowHead

Back to the patient for a moment....

I have been to see my GP and he doesn't think there is anything to worry about, (its a group practice, I've never seen him before and he didn't measure anything during the consultation) but he is happy to refer me to a consultant via my private health insurance.

But he asks me to find a specialist in this field for the referral as he dosen't know one.

If not a specialist in altitude sickness then perhaps a sports clinician who specialises in lungs / heart / blood rather than musculo-skeletal.

Does anyone know of a specialist, preferrably in SE England ?

Mike

P.S. Another couple of points I haven't mentioned earlier - when I was 25 I had a minor injury which necessitated a chest x-ray. The doctor looked at the image on the light box, checked with his colleague and then sent me of to get it done again. Upon seeing the second image and further cross checking he told me that I had the lungs of 55 year old man. Also, when playing sport, I have always noticed ever since I was a kid that I was gasping for breath earlier than the other kids. So can I assume that I've got poor lungs, perhaps they don't have the normal capacity. I smoked from the age of 17 to 26.

A snowHead

micky, I think your GP needs to send you for another chest x-ray first. The diagnosis at 25 could have been because you were a smoker though.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Helen Beaumont, My GP wasn't really that interested, I think I will get more attention when I go private.

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Someone once told me that drinking Coca Cola helps.... whilst there was originally coca leaf in the drink this is now long gone but there are still some active ingredients from "decocainised coca leaves", apparently, which help with altitude sickness... so, there you go, 5 litres of coke a day and you won't feel a thing. Your teeth will be rotten by the end of the week and you'll be marching round like the duracell bunny all day and night, and probably be diagnosed with diabetes on your return, but you won't get altitude sickness symptoms.

Also Clove is supposed to help as it thins the blood, as does garlic, and even tomatoes, dill and fennel have blood thinning properties. (a diet thing going on here?????) There is also an asian mushroom called Reishi which is used the same as the Andeans use coca leaves, but it's not illegal, and also not readily available in the alps so not a great deal of help!

Ginkgo is also supposed to be effective (60-240 mg of standardised extract per day but no more cos you'll be irritable, restless and get diarrhoea....

Preventative measures, most ofwhic have already been covered off here are not drinking alcohol, drink lots of water, and avoid raw vegetables but cooked ones are fine... dunno why but I read it in a natural remedies book.

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Well I have been to see a consultant (courtesy of my work's health insurance) so I thought I'd report back. Things are ok else I might not be in the mood to share the outcome with you.

I couldn't find an altitude specialist so I went to a respiratory physician at Shirley Oaks. He listened to my symptoms (at length poor chap, I took notes with me), checked out the the issue on the Internet (well they can't memorise everything can they), listened to my breathing, took my blood pressure and had me blow into a machine.

No noise to worry about on the breathing, pulse 64, BP was 145/85, and performance against expected for my age/weight/height on the blow machine was 107% and 111%, he said my peak flow was very high at 800 (I really tried hard).

He has given me a prescription for 500mg Acetazolomide which I will try, twice daily 2/3 days before I go and dropping down to once a day if symptoms persist. He tells me that this medication won't slow my natural acclimatisation and it has no side effects.

So fingers crossed I might hit the mountain running from day one next time. I think I might have a look at some other suggetions on here as well, Ginko Biloba maybe.

And more bike work - I live on a hill that's a red run gradient so I have to either set off or come home up a steep hill.

Thanks everybody for your contributions.

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micky, I was interested in the symptoms you describe. They are very like what happens to a business partner of mine when we go scuba diving. On his first dive of the week, he routinely comes from the bottom observing all stops and proper ascent rates; sits down on the deck; drinks a glass of water; and then virtually passes out for about an hour. (Scares the sh*t out of the dive master if we forget to warn him to expect this!) His symptoms look very like Decompression Sickness ("The Bends"), but aren't. He will sit out the second dive of that first day, then be absolutely fine with two dives per day for the rest of the week.

Obviously with diving we are talking about much larger pressure differentials: a standard sport dive on compressed air to 40m is 5 atmospheres of pressure, and returning from 5 atmospheres to 1 atmosphere too quickly is very bad for you (as in potentially fatal).

Thinking about it, though, sport divers will go to 40m/5 atmospheres for only about 30 mins, then return over about 10 mins to the surface. Professional divers who remain for longer periods at greater depths enter 'saturation', and in extreme cases can require several days to return safely to surface pressure.

When we go skiing, the pressure differential is much less: air pressure at 3,000m is approx 0.66 atmospheres, but we have been in 'saturation' at 1 atmosphere for months before, and tend to ascend very quickly. Maybe too quickly for some individuals?

This is probably a crazy thought, but is there anything you can do to 'decompress' more slowly. For example, if you normally fly on your ski holidays, could you consider taking the train instead so that you gain altitude more slowly? Perhaps even drive and break the journey over night at around 1200 - 1500m?

I'm probably barking up the wrong tree, but the parallels are interesting.

Hope you get it sorted, and are able to enjoy max. ski time in the future.

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micky,

be careful taking homeopathic remedies with prescribed medication - there might be a reaction.

After all it is free

micky, great news about your medical condition. I hope it all works out
I'm sure its been mentioned here already, but most of us rely on that well-known "natural remedy" alcohol.
Works for me.

Helen Beaumont, I did post the outcome of my visit to a consultant on another thread on this problem. I am ok and he prescribed me Acetazolomide, 500mg twice a day. I asked him if there were any side effects to this substance (what's the correct word ?) and he said no.

The internet suggests otherwise but that may be over caution, is Azetazolmide fairly harmless ?

Mike

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micky, long-term use can be nasty, but you will be using it only for short periods. Make sure you drink plenty of (non-alcoholic) fluids. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetazolamide

Coincidentally, I read about the The Altitude Center in the Times today.

Help!!

Altitude sickness.... any experince of natural remedies ?

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