Ibra wrote:
Why not take oxygen instead? in liquid form preferably (referred as “no more than salty water”)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_oxygen_(supplement)
…though it does occur to me that for a very long time I have taken an iron supplement (because I am vegetarian) and that really could have a beneficial effect, I guess.
I have no great personal experience, but on my recent aviation medicine refresher course this year we covered hypoxia and a case study with a nasty insidious oxygen failure in a fast jet – listening to some of the RT and actions it was remarkable how they thought they were fine but made odd decisions and bizarre drills. The medics were very clear that the effects (severity and what happens) vary so much between individuals, and I get the impression the research doesn’t really know why.
ASW22 wrote:
The body kind of remembers how to do it.
That may well be. Talking to the mid-70s guy afterwards, he said he regularly went hiking in the mountains around L.A. which go up to about 11.000 ft.
There’s a process called ‘high altitude acclimatisation’ whereby our body adjusts to enable us to live at high altitudes. It’s been fairly extensively studied with respect to mountaineering. Some peoples are also physiologically better adapted for living at high altitude.
‘Liquid oxygen’ sounds highly dubious.
I would still argue that we’re talking about different things. A climber who is working hard at 13000 feet will be subject to different physiological challenges from a pilot who is making arguably more complex decisions but doing far less physical work. A pilot who experiences sudden depressurisation at 26000 feet will have different problems again.
Don’t forget that ibuprofen is a poison for your liver, and especially don’t take it regularly. Ibuprofen and paracetamol are more and more identified as a source of grave liver disease, because they are taken out of control/advise of doctors as a rapid self medication.
Ibuprofen can be bad for your liver but the main concerns are if you have heart disease, kidney disease or stomach ulcers. Asthma, it depends.
Although not a medic I understand that smoking is the biggest factor in altitude tolerance, due to the Carbon Monoxide in cigarette smoke effectively occupying lots of haemoglobin
That’s not necessarily the case, on either count:
The effect of smoking on cerebral hypoxia is a different matter. Perhaps an AME could tell us what is known about that?
Carbon monoxide probably does most of it’s harm by bonding to mitochondrial structures e.g. Cytochrome C Oxidase, rather than Haemoglobin. If you have a CarboxyHaemoglobin level of 30% you are likely to be very sick indeed but if you have a hip replacement and lose 30% of your Haemoglobin, you may feel reasonably well, and you are likely to recover fully. If you give someone with carbon monoxide poisoning 100% oxygen to breathe, their Carboxyhaemoglobin levels will fall rapidly but they will not necessarily get better.
ch.ess wrote:
And while [ibuprofen] is freely available in the US, it is a prescription medication in Europe
It is not a prescription medicine in “Europe”. Maybe in Germany. Not in Sweden.
In The Netherlands it is dependant on dosage – 200mg tablets can be bought over the counter.
