Altitude sickness
February 19, 2010
Altitude sickness is also called mountain sickness. It is caused when a person who is affected with this condition is on a high altitude and feels symptoms of altitude sickness or mountain sickness.
The intensity of a person’s condition is detected by the severity of the symptoms. Mild altitude sickness will give symptoms like headaches, nausea, and a bit of fatigue. Severe altitude sickness will get the body to overreact, and in the process damage vital organs like the brain.
Altitude sickness can be a condition for people who frequent areas of altitude. These people may be travelers, vacationers, skiers, mountain climbers etc. People with sever altitude sickness can experience almost total loss of breathing. This is caused due to fluid build up in the lungs. This condition is also called High Altitude Pulmonary Edema.
A majority of people does feel a slight mountain sickness when on an elevation of over 10,000 feet above sea level. This can be solved by properly acclimatizing to the environment.
Why does altitude bring about a sickness?
This is mainly got to do with the oxygen concentration at those heights. The higher you go, the lesser the oxygen. If you have practiced enough or trained to use less oxygen efficiently then it is not an issue. What is still a mystery is that when on a higher altitude plane, and where there are lower oxygen levels, the blood levels start to drip out fluid. This fluid might get into the lungs and also the brain. This condition is fatal.
So how can you prevent altitude sickness?
Here are some pointers to prevent altitude sickness…
- If you are heading to a place that is elevated…like say above 5000 feet above sea level, try to go a bit slow. What this means is that you could be better off slowly walking up to the ascent, rather than suddenly using a car or a helicopter to land there
- Try to acclimatize to the new environment. Concentrate of deepening your respiration in one cycle, and in lesser cycles
- Eat food such as cereals, white bread, rice, banana, potato etc that provide lot of energy to the body. You can also carry chocolate bars as they will banish any lack of energy in you when on an altitude.
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