(At sea level, a fit runner covering a mile every seven to eight minutes would likely score at 15, which is hard exertion.) On Day One here, the runner covered the course in 26 minutes, had a heart rate of 175 and scored 17, or very, very hard exertion, on the scale. This subjective scale extends from a 7, which is very, very light exertion, to a 19, which is very, very hard exertion. He logged his times, heart rate and difficulty of the workout using the Ratings of Perceived Exertion scale, a table used widely by physiologists for the last two decades. His heart rate begins to decline when performing the same amount of work and breathing becomes less difficult.Ī recent visitor who was born here and lived at these altitudes until his mid-20's kept an informal log of his performance as he regularly ran the same three-mile course. Also, the number of tiny blood vessels called capillaries that deliver blood to individual muscle cells appears to increase.įor the person exercising regularly, the result is a steady improvement in his performance. These chemical processes in the muscle cells seem to become more tolerant of the perpetual oxygen shortage. Research also has shown that acclimatization brings changes in the chemical enzymes that carry out the energy-producing activities of the muscle cells. At the same time, the volume of blood pumped through the heart had declined 9 percent. In a 1980 study, for example, as experimental subjects who came from sea level to 13,000 feet became acclimatized, they showed a 19 percent increase in the amount of oxygen in the blood in their arteries.
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This fits in with the heart pumping less blood. Appenzeller said, ''and therefore are better able to take in what oxygen is available and deliver it to the tissues.''Īt the same time, acclimatization allows the blood to carry more oxygen, largely through an increase in the number of red blood cells. ''High altitude natives have a larger chest capacity,'' Dr. In fact, research projects conducted over the last two decades have shown that merely being born at a high altitude is often sufficient. People who become acclimatized to the effects of altitude most easily are those born at higher altitudes, generally above 5,000 feet. The heart also beats faster in order to move more oxygen-carrying blood cells past the muscle cells. This enables sufficient oxygen to pass into the blood to meet the rapacious demands of the muscle cells. Thus everyone, including the superbly trained athlete, must breathe faster at higher altitudes to bring a greater volume of air into the lungs. He led a research expedition to the Himalayas last year to study high altitude effects on the blood. Otto Appenzeller, a professor of neurology and medicine at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
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''If you were to run a mile and needed X amount of oxygen at sea level, you would need the same amount to run at 15,000 feet,'' said Dr.