Random health trivia
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- bergsteigen
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Re: Random health trivia
I’ll have to try the pursed lip breathing trick myself, since I had to do that hiking the other day. Would be nice to see a difference, since I told a friend to try that breathing technique when she was struggling a bit.
I have noticed that my device doesn’t give out a reading at all if my hands are cold, so I try to keep them warm. Though I’m sure my summit % is lower that it really is because of temperature. Why I only use the numbers as an idea of what my response is, not an absolute.
I have noticed that my device doesn’t give out a reading at all if my hands are cold, so I try to keep them warm. Though I’m sure my summit % is lower that it really is because of temperature. Why I only use the numbers as an idea of what my response is, not an absolute.
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Re: Random health trivia
Oxy-pulse meters don't work very well if your hands are cold.bergsteigen wrote: ↑Sun Sep 27, 2020 10:00 pm I have noticed that my device doesn’t give out a reading at all if my hands are cold, so I try to keep them warm. Though I’m sure my summit % is lower that it really is because of temperature. Why I only use the numbers as an idea of what my response is, not an absolute.
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Re: Random health trivia
Which one did you buy?daway8 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 26, 2020 11:41 pm So on a late night impulse buy I grabbed some cheap pulse oximeter off Amazon and just out of random curiosity stuck the tiny light weight thing in my pocket this weekend.
I checked myself just for fun at a few points along the West Dyer - Dyer traverse this weekend and after the most intense section involving much higher than normal exertion somewhere around 13,500ft I measured my oxygen saturation at 75% and pulse at 145bpm (vs 82% and 88bpm later on Mt Evans B and 95% and 72bpm as I'm typing this at home).
Just curious if anyone else has fiddled with monitoring such things while hiking/climbing and if there's any way I can optimize my performance by occasionally checking/targeting anything in particular (in other words not looking for medical advice per se, just random curiosity).
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- mtree
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Re: Random health trivia
This.Flyingfish wrote: ↑Sun Sep 27, 2020 6:46 pm
It takes 10-20 days to loose acclimation and up to 2 months to attain it as some people have large amounts of native EPO so it is very easy for them to produce hemoglobin.
Try explaining it to folks who think driving to 10K and sleeping the night before will acclimate them for the next day's hike. Ughhh.
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- disentangled
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Re: Random health trivia
i live at 5000' and it's taken me three months of trips to colorado every fortnight to acclimate to the point where i don't feel like s**t on every hike. no way in hell i'm gonna allow myself to lose it in a matter of 10-20 days!mtree wrote: ↑Mon Sep 28, 2020 11:37 amThis.Flyingfish wrote: ↑Sun Sep 27, 2020 6:46 pm
It takes 10-20 days to loose acclimation and up to 2 months to attain it as some people have large amounts of native EPO so it is very easy for them to produce hemoglobin.
Try explaining it to folks who think driving to 10K and sleeping the night before will acclimate them for the next day's hike. Ughhh.
Re: Random health trivia
mibest Fingertip Pulse Oximeter.
I had been wearing gloves most of the day due to the cold wind so my hands weren't too cold when I would pull the gloves of and stick this on my finger.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BNZ2Z41?re ... b_ap_share
- MtnHub
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Re: Random health trivia
The University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics is a major teaching hospital and thus there are lots of medical research studies going on all the time in various departments. Whenever I qualify, I participate in as many studies as I can. A few days ago I was involved in a study for the purpose of learning how cyclic low oxygen conditions affects carotid blood vessel function.
For a couple of hours I had to breathe through a closed system in which they changed the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide and time controlled trials in random order while they measured my blood pressure and carotid blood flow. After they finished, I asked them what my O2 sats were and I was surprised that at one point during a brief hypoxic trial, it dropped to 76%.
I didn't really feel like I was breathing any harder or felt any mental status change at all during the procedure, so it surprised me that I felt 'fine' despite the low level.
Anyway, it's been an interesting experience as I've always been curious how low I've been sometimes in the mountains.
This study involves two separate trials so I will be going through the exact same thing again next week.
For a couple of hours I had to breathe through a closed system in which they changed the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide and time controlled trials in random order while they measured my blood pressure and carotid blood flow. After they finished, I asked them what my O2 sats were and I was surprised that at one point during a brief hypoxic trial, it dropped to 76%.
I didn't really feel like I was breathing any harder or felt any mental status change at all during the procedure, so it surprised me that I felt 'fine' despite the low level.
Anyway, it's been an interesting experience as I've always been curious how low I've been sometimes in the mountains.
This study involves two separate trials so I will be going through the exact same thing again next week.
- stoopdude
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Re: Random health trivia
I have taken my pulse ox hiking with me a lot... I'm convinced what's going on here is that we're getting poor perfusion to the periphery (like fingers). I think you'd really need to draw an Arterial Blood Gas up at 14k to get a decent picture of what your actual O2 sat is.
Re: Random health trivia
My buddy brought a pulse ox on Quandary once and we tried it on the summit - I forget exactly what it said but he and I had a comparable number in the low 80s or high 70s. A couple guys overheard us and were pretty worked up about our number. Turned out they were ER docs and were concerned about us. We let them try it - and they got a similar #. To which they responded "Huh, I guess it's ok." It was pretty funny to watch them change their attitude so quickly.
Re: Random health trivia
Current generation Apple Watch has this feature, just looked up my stats for past month, lowest was 89%, on a high altitude hiking day.
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Re: Random health trivia
I was wondering a few years back why I always feel like I have to stop for 5 to 10 seconds every 50 to 100 feet above 13000 feet so I brought one of our pulse ox machines from work (so it was a good one) and was pretty surprised to see my heart rate so fast and O2 sat of 78 to 80. I watched as I stopped for that 10 or so seconds and watched the pulse ox rise as my heart rate came down some. It correlated with how I felt too and was reproducible. My husband's went down too but not that far. As medical people, we were pretty surprised. So good to see some educated explanations. Also will just add to the accuracy thing...make sure your hand isn't shaking or moving around. You should see a regular beat to the light bars or if it has a wave pattern, it should look regular and equal. Also will not give accurate readings through nail polish.
Re: Random health trivia
I have a pulse-ox too. Relaxing at home, which is at 6,900 feet, I'm usually at 97% - 98% o2 sat. When I've checked it above 14,000, my sats are usually around 88%. Kind of cool because I don't really notice much of a change at 14,000.