When in doubt, go higher.

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osprey
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When in doubt, go higher.

Post by osprey »

Here’s why living in the mountains could be best thing for your health

March 16, 2023
by Jocelyn Solis-Moreira
Woman sitting alone on a mountain
SAN FRANCISCO — If you want the secret to a healthier life, it might be a move to the mountains. A new study finds the two million people who live at an elevation of more than 4,500 meters — about the height of Mount Rainier, Mount Whitney, and many Colorado and Alaska peaks — appear to have lower rates of metabolic diseases such as diabetes and coronary heart disease.

The new animal study suggests it’s not just the daily treks up the mountains that leave them in tip-top shape. Researchers in California say the reason behind their good health stems from the low oxygen levels from living at higher elevations. Understanding how low oxygen levels affect health could lead to some new strategies for treating metabolic diseases.

“When an organism is exposed to chronically low levels of oxygen, we found that different organs reshuffle their fuel sources and their energy-producing pathways in various ways,” says study senior author Isha Jain, PhD, a Gladstone assistant investigator, in a statement. “We hope these findings will help us identify metabolic switches that might be beneficial for metabolism even outside of low-oxygen environments.”

Best Perfumes For Women In 2023_ Top 5 Fragrances.mp4

At sea level, oxygen makes up 21 percent of the air. For those living above 4,500 meters (14,764 feet), however, oxygen makes up only 11 percent of the air. Living in these areas for long periods of time forces the human body to adapt to the shortage of oxygen — otherwise known as hypoxia.

The mountain town of Wengen, Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland
The mountain town of Wengen, Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland. (Photo by Yura Lytkin on Unsplash)
Could less oxygen actually be good for you?

Hypoxia is an area of interest for biologists who have observed it among isolated cells or within cancerous tumors. In the current study, Jain and her colleagues looked at how long-term hypoxia impacts organs all over the body.

“We wanted to profile the metabolic changes that take place as an organism adapts to hypoxia,” says Ayush Midha, a graduate student in Jain’s lab and lead author of the study. “We thought this might provide some insight into how that adaptation protects against metabolic disease.”

The team placed adult mice in pressure chambers that contained 21, 11, or 8-percent oxygen — all levels where both mice and humans can survive. The researchers observed the rodent’s behavior over a three-week period along with keeping track of their temperature, carbon dioxide level, and blood sugar levels. PET scans helped the team look at how different organs were consuming nutrients.

It took a couple of days for the mice to adjust to the pressure chamber. Mice under conditions of hypoxia (11% and 8% oxygen levels) moved around less and sometimes spent hours staying completely still. However, by the end of the third week, their movement patterns returned to normal. Carbon dioxide levels in the blood decreased when mice breathe faster to get more oxygen, but this returned to normal levels after the three-week period.

There was one bodily change that did not revert back to normal levels. The mice’s metabolism appeared permanently altered from the hypoxic chambers. Animals experiencing hypoxia had lower blood sugar levels and weight that never returned to pre-hypoxic levels. The researchers suggest these long-term changes resemble what doctors see in people living in higher elevations.

This could be big news for diabetics

The PET scans of each organ showed some permanent changes as well. Normally, the body needs tons of oxygen to metabolize fatty acids (the building blocks of fats) and amino acids (the building blocks of protein). Less oxygen is necessary to metabolize sugar. Mice under hypoxic conditions showed an increase in glucose metabolism, an observation the researchers expected. The unexpected finding was that brown fat and skeletal muscles — two organs known for their high levels of glucose metabolism — reduced the amount of sugar they normally use.

“Prior to this study, the assumption in the field was that in hypoxic conditions, your whole body’s metabolism becomes more efficient in using oxygen, which means it burns more glucose and fewer fatty acids and amino acids,” says Jain. “We showed that while some organs are indeed consuming more glucose, others become glucose savers instead.”

Jain says the observation makes sense. Individual cells in a petri dish don’t need to compromise their glucose use. An entire animal, on the other hand, need to find ways to ration their glucose and make it last for all bodily systems.

The drop in glucose levels and body weight seen in hypoxic mice have a link to a lower risk of diseases in humans, including heart disease. Jain and her team hope to take these results and apply them on a cellular level. Their next work involves using hypoxic conditions to study individual cell types and levels of signaling molecules. The finding is a step towards creating new drugs that mimic the metabolic benefits hypoxia or high-altitude trips provide to human health.

“We already see athletes going to train at altitude to improve their athletic performance; maybe in the future, we’ll start recommending that people spend time at high altitude for other health reasons,” concludes Midha.

The study is published in the journal Cell Metabolism.
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disentangled
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Re: When in doubt, go higher.

Post by disentangled »

This is basically the conclusion that Konstantin Buteyko came to in the 1950s and is the basis for his breathing method to increase the body's adaptation to CO2 and reduce chronic hyperventilation. Buteyko's research showed that chronic disease diminishes when breathing rate and volume are reduced.
Last edited by disentangled on Fri Mar 24, 2023 4:07 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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cedica
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Re: When in doubt, go higher.

Post by cedica »

osprey wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 12:45 pm Best Perfumes For Women In 2023_ Top 5 Fragrances.mp4

At sea level, oxygen makes up 21 percent of the air. For those living above 4,500 meters (14,764 feet), however, oxygen makes up only 11 percent of the air.
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Re: When in doubt, go higher.

Post by SnowAlien »

It's a well known fact that higher elevation locales are so called "blue zones" where people live longer than average. It is attributed to low obesity, good cardio health, low rates of diabetes/ kidney disease. That's why Covid was never an issue for mountain towns... However, the lack of oxygen causes elevated suicide rates, and the sun exposure causes skin cancer (melanoma).
https://www.summitdaily.com/news/the-lo ... the-world/
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justiner
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Re: When in doubt, go higher.

Post by justiner »

Past research cited self-selection as one reason why people living at high elevation are more healthier. If you were of poorer health, you just couldn't - it would be like asking someone that's suffering from heart disease to run a marathon every day- you're going to kill them.

I'm not surprised that metabolic health is a useful marker for overall health. But you don't need to be at altitude to gain metabolic health - you just need to move your body in a way that keeps you aerobic- a daily vigorous walk, for example. We all sit too much.

I haven't been able to gleam Buteyko in detail, as it seems a closely guarded secret (to make $$$ apparently), but I do believe that for whatever reason, people should work on their breathing and the takeaway is don't breath so hard, so much.

If you're hiking a 14er, and you're getting out of breath, you're going too fast - slow down until your breathing is under control. You shouldn't be breathing like you're PR'ing a marathon every hike - work on your metabolic fitness before the next season. My feeling is that many people who come up from ~ sea level, try to hike a 14er and get symptoms similar to "altitude sickness" just have poor metabolic fitness (but that's just my guess).

It makes total sense that a sickness that targets (in part) the respiratory system can be survived better for those with better metabolic health, in part because good metabolic health is (again) a good marker for overall health, as well as just being able to ride out a situation when lung capacity is impacted and you can still work with the amount of O2 you can get into your blood. I can't find a source to say that Covid was no problem in mountain towns, but that self-selection of healthy and WEALTHY people who may have better access to healthcare could be a big part of it.
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disentangled
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Re: When in doubt, go higher.

Post by disentangled »

Justin.... take a look at NormalBreathing.com. It's all there. Free.

Buteyko is just one of many very simple techniques to consistently simulate the effects of high altitude at lower elevations.
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Re: When in doubt, go higher.

Post by justiner »

osprey wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 12:45 pm At sea level, oxygen makes up 21 percent of the air. For those living above 4,500 meters (14,764 feet), however, oxygen makes up only 11 percent of the air.
Not to ASCHTTHHULLY this, but the % of oxygen is I believe: the same, it's that air pressure that is lower. When people say, "it's hard to breath up here" (meaning on top of a mountain), part of that is because it is: the diaphragm has a harder time getting the lungs to let out air, as there's less air pressure to do that process "for free" (like how a balloon let's out air).

Some of that time people take to "acclimate" is just your diaphragm getting used to sucking out more air. Before Covid, people would post those photos of them wearing masks to enhance their breathing capacity. In way they work, but they're working your diaphragm (not anything to do with oxygen absorption or anything like that) - you're making it hard for your diaphram to breathe.

Buuut your diaphragm is probably not what's holding you back at altitude (you're experiencing hypoxia) - breathing faster isn't really going to help, so using those masks beforehand at home is probably not worth it.
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Re: When in doubt, go higher.

Post by justiner »

disentangled wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 10:18 am Justin.... take a look at NormalBreathing.com. It's all there. Free.

Buteyko is just one of many very simple techniques to consistently simulate the effects of high altitude at lower elevations.
Cool, I'll check it out.
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daway8
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Re: When in doubt, go higher.

Post by daway8 »

justiner wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 10:24 am
osprey wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 12:45 pm At sea level, oxygen makes up 21 percent of the air. For those living above 4,500 meters (14,764 feet), however, oxygen makes up only 11 percent of the air.
Not to ASCHTTHHULLY this, but the % of oxygen is I believe: the same, it's that air pressure that is lower. When people say, "it's hard to breath up here" (meaning on top of a mountain), part of that is because it is: the diaphragm has a harder time getting the lungs to let out air, as there's less air pressure to do that process "for free" (like how a balloon let's out air).
Interesting - this inspired a brief flurry of research as I'm currently stuck waiting on a few things... At work, as part of training for compressed gas cylinder handling, they had a cool slide about the percentage of oxygen as you begin to get asphyxiated from an uncontrolled release of gas into a confined space that showed what symptoms you would experience at different percentages of oxygen in the room and then related that to what percentage oxygen you would have at different altitudes (it was slightly disturbing actually...).

But when I did a quick Google to see if I could find something like that online there was a lot of confusing, somewhat contradictory sounding info out there. What I finally settled on is that it seems largely a matter of semantics when taking about this.

This site has a helpful graph of what they call the "effective oxygen %" based on altitude. They say "At real altitude, the barometric pressure of the atmosphere is significantly less than that of sea-level environments. The result is that oxygen molecules in the air are further apart, reducing the oxygen content of each breath incrementally as one goes up in altitude."
https://hypoxico.com/pages/altitude-to-oxygen-chart

So it seems you could say on the one hand that the actual percentage of oxygen isn't changing but the amount of oxygen getting into your lungs is - thus you could kinda say both sides are right.

And another good summary: "The pressure in the atmosphere decreases as you gain elevation. The percent of oxygen is actually the same at all altitudes, 21%; however, it is 21% of a smaller number as one goes higher. The barometric pressure at sea level is 760 mmHg, and at 10,000 ft, it is 534 mmHg. Breathing the air of Telluride is the equivalent to breathing air with only 15% oxygen at sea level, instead of 21%. The net result is that there is 29% less oxygen in the air at Telluride compared with sea level. At 14,000 ft, the air has 43% less oxygen than at sea level. Because of the reduced air pressure at high altitude, the volume of air you breathe into your lungs contains less oxygen molecules in each breath."
http://www.highaltitudedoctor.org/physiology
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Re: When in doubt, go higher.

Post by justiner »

I think an easy way to think about it - and why it's probably best to talk about pressure rather than percent is: it's not that there's LESS oxygen in the air at higher altitude and MORE of something else. The percent of oxygen doesn't change when compared to other gases present. There's just less pressure all around - which yeah: means less atoms/molecules. Layman's terms vs maybe something a little more specific. No biggie.

The diaphragm stuff I posted (and not to wander too much on this thread) is about how since there's less pressure, there's less force exerted on the lungs, diaphragm, making it harder to exhale - your diaphragm has a harder job to do.

Here's a theory: this may lead to people breathing in less volume of fresh air, as they didn't breathe out as much as they usually do at a lower altitude - the same work from the diaphragm yielded less results. Again, perhaps that leads to an hypoxic state?

Going full 'round to breathing exercises (and 14er hiking to be topical) - perhaps slower, fuller inhale/exhale is better than short quick breaths - I mean if you do enough short quick breaths you're apt to give yourself an anxiety attack. And again, if you're sucking wind on a hill climb at altitude - do you NOT think that doesn't have an effect on your stress response? You're literally giving signals to your body that you are in trouble.

Maybe there's some take home advice in there, and more of what I mean by, "breathe less".
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disentangled
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Re: When in doubt, go higher.

Post by disentangled »

I got a little lost on the point about percentage, but the way I understand it is that the positive result of "breathing less" is not due to the amount of oxygen that is taken into the lungs but, rather, the effect of the body's processing of CO2. Breathing less oxygen produces higher levels of CO2 in the blood, which triggers a better efficiency of oxygen processed in the cells. In effect, deep breathing is counterproductive.
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Re: When in doubt, go higher.

Post by cedica »

justiner wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 12:07 pm Here's a theory: this may lead to people breathing in less volume of fresh air, as they didn't breathe out as much as they usually do at a lower altitude - the same work from the diaphragm yielded less results. Again, perhaps that leads to an hypoxic state?
People need to develop tracheal Mass Airflow Sensors to deal with this problem (MAF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_flow_sensor). Cars have figured out this evolutionary solution long time ago.
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