Altitude Sickness
We want you to have a happy and healthy adventure in the mountains but we think it’s worth mentioning that high altitude can be dangerous, especially to the unfit, inexperienced or ill-informed. Paradoxically, it often depends simply on your genetics: we’ve had olympic athletes get into trouble at high altitude when other less finely tuned people are cruising by. So we’ve pulled together some information here which should help you in planning your adventure.
First of all, if you’ve booked a trip to the mountains with a known tour operator and will be accompanied by a guide, then make a point of ensuring that your guide will be fully qualified, be experienced in administering to anybody suffering from altitude illness and that they will carry both drugs and resuscitation devices.
Get Educated
You’re probably going to spend a lot of money on your trip so it’s worth protecting your investment. So why not read up
Princeton University has produced some very useful reading matter on altitude illness and you can access that HERE. If you want to go beyond reading matter and take some action in preparation for your trip then why not contact The Altitude Centre.
NOTE
Finally, we have had a couple of cases where people have gone on to our medical screening help line and declared a cardiovascular condition, then gone on to a trip at high altitude and suffered very badly, and in one case with terminal results. When we medically screen somebody and agree to insure you, we do not routinely ask what you intend to do on your trip. It’s up to you, if you know you have say, a heart condition, we expect you to obtain the all clear from your general practitioner prior to undertaking such exertion. High altitude climbing or trekking requires very high levels of exertion and can cause illness which will further endanger anybody with pre-existing medical condition/s. Knowingly exposing yourself to dangers which might exacerbate any pre-existing medical condition may compromise your cover
You can find some other useful information regarding sports that we cover in our Sports Information Library.
The DOGTAG Team
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