Random health trivia

Items that do not fit the categories above.
Forum rules
  • This is a mountaineering forum, so please keep your posts on-topic. Posts do not all have to be related to the 14ers but should at least be mountaineering-related.
  • Personal attacks and confrontational behavior will result in removal from the forum at the discretion of the administrators.
  • Do not use this forum to advertise, sell photos or other products or promote a commercial website.
  • Posts will be removed at the discretion of the site administrator or moderator(s), including: Troll posts, posts pushing political views or religious beliefs, and posts with the purpose of instigating conflict within the forum.
For more details, please see the Terms of Use you agreed to when joining the forum.
User avatar
bergsteigen
Posts: 2391
Joined: 6/14/2008
14ers: 58  52  18 
13ers: 538 100 12
Trip Reports (237)
 
Contact:

Re: Random health trivia

Post by bergsteigen »

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.
"Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports ... all others are games." - Ernest Hemingway (or was it Barnaby Conrad?)
Your knees only get so many bumps in life, don't waste them on moguls!
“No athlete is truly tested until they’ve stared an injury in the face and come out on the other side stronger than ever” -anonymous

http://otinasadventures.com @otina
User avatar
rijaca
Posts: 3387
Joined: 7/8/2006
14ers: 58  4 
13ers: 244 1 2
Trip Reports (1)
 

Re: Random health trivia

Post by rijaca »

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.
Oxy-pulse meters don't work very well if your hands are cold.
"A couple more shots of whiskey,
the women 'round here start looking good"
ker0uac
Posts: 547
Joined: 8/30/2016
Trip Reports (0)
 

Re: Random health trivia

Post by ker0uac »

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).
Which one did you buy?
Those who travel to mountain-tops are half in love with themselves and half in love with oblivion
User avatar
mtree
Posts: 1469
Joined: 6/16/2010
Trip Reports (0)
 

Re: Random health trivia

Post by mtree »

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.
This.
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.
- I didn't say it was your fault. I said I was blaming you.
User avatar
disentangled
Posts: 532
Joined: 6/15/2018
Trip Reports (0)
 

Re: Random health trivia

Post by disentangled »

mtree wrote: Mon Sep 28, 2020 11:37 am
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.
This.
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.
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!
User avatar
daway8
Posts: 1314
Joined: 8/24/2017
14ers: 58  24 
13ers: 155 29
Trip Reports (70)
 

Re: Random health trivia

Post by daway8 »

ker0uac wrote: Mon Sep 28, 2020 9:48 am Which one did you buy?
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
User avatar
MtnHub
Posts: 574
Joined: 6/16/2005
14ers: 28 
13ers: 23
Trip Reports (50)
 

Re: Random health trivia

Post by MtnHub »

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.
User avatar
stoopdude
Posts: 118
Joined: 6/26/2013
14ers: 57  3 
13ers: 72
Trip Reports (0)
 

Re: Random health trivia

Post by stoopdude »

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.
User avatar
BobbyFinn
Posts: 451
Joined: 7/14/2008
14ers: 58  21 
13ers: 573 5 7
Trip Reports (19)
 

Re: Random health trivia

Post by BobbyFinn »

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.
User avatar
Will_E
Posts: 411
Joined: 8/13/2018
14ers: 58  58 
13ers: 210 37
Trip Reports (21)
 

Re: Random health trivia

Post by Will_E »

Current generation Apple Watch has this feature, just looked up my stats for past month, lowest was 89%, on a high altitude hiking day.
83C73DA5-5FE0-4325-8880-70E7FF6857C2.png
83C73DA5-5FE0-4325-8880-70E7FF6857C2.png (367.22 KiB) Viewed 2286 times
arianna2
Posts: 123
Joined: 8/23/2009
14ers: 58 
13ers: 9
Trip Reports (45)
 

Re: Random health trivia

Post by arianna2 »

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.
User avatar
jrs1965
Posts: 702
Joined: 1/3/2010
14ers: 58  1  3 
13ers: 10
Trip Reports (0)
 

Re: Random health trivia

Post by jrs1965 »

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.
Post Reply