Altitude sickness acclimatize to altitude gradually · Acclimatize to altitude gradually in Altitude sickness
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Acclimatize to altitude gradually in Altitude sickness
Acclimatize to altitude gradually in Altitude sickness
Acclimatization is the process of getting your body to adapt to the lower oxygen levels by ascending slowly into higher altitudes, spending some time at each one to adapt. The most important factor is to increase your sleeping elevation (the altitude where you're spending the night) slowly. If you're on a hiking or climbing holiday, a typical strategy is to spend a day (or initially part of a day) at a higher altitude and return to a lower altitude to sleep. This also works for people doing winter sports at high altitudes: ski at the top of the resort and sleep at the bottom.
Here are the recommended maximum increases in your sleeping elevation which will stop most people from proceeding to AMS:
Go no higher than 2400 meters (8000 feet) the first night.
Increase your sleeping elevation by 300 meters (1000 feet) per night after 3000 meters (10,000 feet).
Every 1000 meters (3000 feet), you should spend a second night at the same altitude. This will be every fourth night if you have been ascending at the maximum pace recommended above.
You can, of course, ascend more gradually than these rates. Many people ascending from sea level choose to spend several nights at 2500 meters (8000 feet) to 3000 meters (10,000 feet) before beginning acclimatization to higher altitude.
During acclimatisation, drink a lot of non-alcoholic drinks. Some people find vegetarian food slightly accelerates the acclimatisation. Local recipes like mate de coca in Peru (tea from coca leaves) are fine, but their effect is doubtful.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Altitude sickness
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Altitude sickness Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.