Altitude sickness when skiing?

bandit wrote:
So what would be the effects there?

zero

I haven't had altitute sickness, but I have been affected by sunstroke and dehydration. It was horrible. I slept for 24 hours solid. Not a good use of time on a ski trip. I now ski with a 3L camelback so it never happens again.

ise wrote:

bandit wrote:
So what would be the effects there?

zero

Bandit wrote:
For many years I suffered mild symptoms, frequent headache, poor sleep patterns, snotty nose and nosebleeds. Always during the first week of a two week alpine trip. Both winter and summer. I started taking Gingko Biloba for unrelated reasons and was very pleasantly surprised the next winter, to find that most of my symptoms had gone. It could all be a coincidence, perhaps I outgrew all the symptoms at once

Must be a coincidence then, 20+ years of alpine nosebleeds and the rest, gone in a flash. Or perhaps I'm really unfit )

bandit wrote:
mild symptoms, frequent headache, poor sleep patterns, snotty nose and nosebleeds. Always during the first week of a two week alpine trip. Both winter and summer. I started taking Gingko Biloba for unrelated reasons and was very pleasantly surprised the next winter, to find that most of my symptoms had gone. It could all be a coincidence, perhaps I outgrew all the symptoms at once


Must be a coincidence then, 20+ years of alpine nosebleeds and the rest, gone in a flash. Or perhaps I'm really unfit )

It's not a coincidence, you didn't have AMS.

"snotty nose and nosebleeds" are not symptoms of AMS. Simply having headaches and poor sleep does not register on the Lake Louise Consensus on the Definition of Altitude Illness scoring system so according to the International Hypoxia Symposium, you don't have AMS.

leavesj wrote:I haven't had altitute sickness, but I have been affected by sunstroke and dehydration. It was horrible. I slept for 24 hours solid. Not a good use of time on a ski trip. I now ski with a 3L camelback so it never happens again.

And you are now everyskier ) Add to that some nasal damage from breathing cold air and you've precisely diagnosed what most people are actually suffering from.

If people had been to extreme altitude and dealt with AMS for real they know the difference soon enough.

I was not suggesting that I had suffered Acute Mountain Sickness. Having looked at the link in your post, both of us have had some of the symptoms listed in the AMS box. We both suffered from mental dysfunction and sharp headaches on the Aguille du Midi, which were achieved without going outside of a heated environment, as the weather was awful.

The American College of Physicians made a study of travellers to moderate elevations (6300 to 9700 feet), of over 3000 travellers to the Colorado Rockies.

Their findings:

Conclusions: Acute mountain sickness occurs in 25% of visitors to moderate altitudes and affects activity in most symptomatic visitors. Persons who are younger, less physically fit, live at sea level, have a history of acute mountain sickness, or have underlying lung problems more often develop these symptoms.

Article from 2004 here http://www.annals.org/content/118/8/587.abstract

Ski high, sleep low I reckon :D

Hi Ise, nice to see you back again :D

Thanks for that link Bandit :D

I couldn't get to see the full text, only the abstract, but I could get to see the full text of this one, in Pediatrics - an American paediatric journal, which suggested that perhaps children are less affected, not more affected, by altitude as compared with adults (although their sample was quite small).

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/123/1/1

48 Swiss children and adolescents were taken rapidly up to 3450m for 3 days and studied in a laboratory (poor kids - some holiday!). Only 38% of them suffered from mild altitide sickness, as compared to 84% of adults also brought rapidly up to a similar altitude at a different location. The kids mainly suffered from fatigue and sleeping problems.

I know that when sleeping and ski-ing in high altitude resorts I suffer from; feeling tipsy (Kaprun), becoming very short of breath with physical exercise (La Rosiere), and insomnia - waking up at about 3 a.m. (Val Thorens). I was much better sleeping in Courchevel 1550 last year.

I would suggest the most dangerous thing about these mild forms of altitude sickness is that one can become very tired and confused towards the end of a long day without realizing it, and therefore more prone to make mistakes and get hurt.

I wonder if anyone has done any research into comparing accident rates for good skiers in low and high altitude resorts on, say, day four of their holiday.

Ally

My Sis-in-Law suffers with motion sickness on chair lifts !!!!