Altitude Sickness
I started my 14’ers class a couple weeks ago and my first assignment was to write a three page paper on altitude sickness. I figured I might as well throw it on UpaDowna and it just might help someone out if they experience some of the symptoms. The paper is very long (compared to our normal posts), but it has some great information in it.
When I think of altitude sickness I think of hiking a 14er and getting a headache or going for a trail run and not being able to run as far or as fast as because I was at 10,000 feet instead of 5,000. I never knew that altitude sickness literally makes your brain leak which could cause you to lose muscular control of one side of your body or even fall into a coma. I can’t help but think, “That would never happen to me”, but the more I read the more I realize that it does happen. Its first stage is acute mountain sickness which is usually caused by the lack of oxygen. It’s not because the airs molecular structure is changing, that doesn’t happen, what really occurs is that air molecules expand with lower air pressure and your lungs cannot fit as many molecules in them. Studies show that oxygen can be reduced by as much as 40% at 12,000 feet. This obviously could cause some problems. Not many people exercise at high altitude but in our industry and in many of our hobbies we have to know how to spot AMS before it progresses to something that we really need to worry about such as high altitude cerebral edema(HACE) or high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE). Those two can and will kill you if you don’t get down to lower altitudes or take certain drugs such as acetazolamide which is sold under the drug name Diamox. The bottom line is that as always prevention is much better than treatment so we will go more deeply into each sickness and some ways to prevent them.
Acute Mountain Sickness is the sickness that leads to HAPE and HACE. AMS usually happens above 8,000 ft and has many symptoms that can give you a heads up. Here is a list of the signs and symptoms; headaches, fatigue, stomach illness, dizziness, loss of sleep, nosebleeds, vomiting, rapid pulse, swelling of the hands and feet, diarrhea, and numbness on in your limbs. These are some pretty obvious symptoms and should be very cautiously analyzed if ran across while at altitude. Many of these symptoms could easily be misinterpreted as “normal” feelings while climbing mountains. Headaches,
fatigue, rapid pulse, and sometimes dizziness are all a part of mountaineering but we have to keep close tabs on these things because they could lead to a deadly situation.
High Altitude Pulmonary Edema – Pulmonary stems from the Latin word pulmo which means “having to do with the lungs”. Edema comes from the Greek word oíd?ma and means “swelling”. So in layman’s terms HAPE is high altitude swelling of the lungs. They swell because the vessels in your lungs start to leak water and your lungs begin to swell up with fluid.
HAPE is one of the biggest threats to high altitude mountaineers but it has also been known to affect some people as low as 5,000 feet above sea level. That’s almost a thousand feet lower than Colorado Springs. My point is that you never really know who or where it could strike. Obviously with higher altitude comes a lower blood oxygen level and at 19,000 feet or above it can cause progressive deterioration of the human body when HAPE starts to get bad there are many signs and symptoms to be looking for. Wheezing, rapid breathing, rapid heart rate, and blue skin are all signs of HAPE. All those seem pretty typical except blue skin. Your skin turns blue because of a decreased level of oxygenated hemoglobin in your blood, this is a very obvious sign that tells you to get somewhere with more oxygen. The symptoms are problems with breathing, a cough, or even tightness and congestion in your chest. HAPE is one of biggest killers when it comes to untreated high altitude sicknesses.
High Altitude Cerebral Edema – HACE sounds like it would be a almost impossible thing to deal with at altitude and often times it is. Your memory can start to fade away or you could start to have hallucinations. These are only a couple signs and when I first read about them I wasn’t that impressed until I started thinking about all these things happening to me when I was trying to climb a mountain. Then it starts to get a little scary. What makes it even scarier is the fact that HACE is usually accompanied by HAPE. That’s right, now not only can you barely breath but you may have a paralyzed limb or even worse you could slip out of consciousness and find yourself on the side of a mountain in a coma. Not to worry because if you have read this paper you already have the perfect tools to not let this happen to you and that tool is knowledge. HACE is the worse high altitude sickness you can get because it affects the one tool that you have to use to get up and down mountains without dying and that tool is your brain. If your brain starts to go you are done. So protect it by paying attention to your body but also knowing your personal limitations. If at any time while you are hiking you witness someone doing all the “umbles” (stumbling, fumbling and mumbling) you know they may be suffering from ataxia which can be caused by HACE and is dysfunctions in your nervous system causing lose of coordination. Now that we have looked at all the ways altitude can mess you up let’s look at ways to prevent it.
Acclimation – is by far the best way to prevent altitude sickness. Acclimation is a very simple concept. Simply take your time when moving large distances in the vertical direction. What this does is it gives your body more time to make adaptations to the lack of oxygen at high altitudes. Not only does it give your body a better chance in the fight against altitude sicknesses but it also gives you more time to notice the signs and symptoms. If someone has summit fever and is cranking up a mountain without listening to his/her body than they may not notice the wheezing or nausea that is telling them to hold on for a minute and listen to what it has to say. It reminds me of watching David Hahn’s interview in the Serec movie “How Much is too Much”. David is a high altitude mountain guide and has been to the top of Mt. Everest eleven times and he talks about watching his friends through a telescope as he slowly moves his way up the side of the mountain. The sun was slowly setting and his friends were moving so slowly and not turning back, he watched as his two of friends finally made it to the summit right as the sun was dropping behind the horizon. One of his friends had tried Everest nine times and he listened, in horror, to his friend as he talked about not being able to see and barely being able to stand. This movie changed the way I think about mountaineering and gave me a good idea of what altitude can do to the psyche. The man who died ignored everything his body was telling him and literally climbed to his death. Altitude sickness is like many things in the wilderness, it’s amplified by poor decisions.
Climb On!!
Ryan
