Pulse Oximetry, Blood Oxygen Saturation and Altitude Acclimatization

guest — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:51:25 GMT

For awhile, I’ve tried to determine if repeated short-term exposure to altitude can help with the acclimatization process. This curiosity is geared primarily for people living in a Front Range situation and then doing fun activities, training or racing in the mountains.

To help me determine if short-term exposure to altitude might help acclimatize people so that they can enjoy fun activities, training and racing at altitude, I picked up a pulse oximeter. I mentioned the pulse oximeter in a 2010 blog. My personal interest in the numbers is for alpine skiing, Nordic skiing, trail running, road cycling, mountain biking and hiking.

A pulse oximeter is a non-invasive way to measure the amount of oxygen the blood is carrying. The number displayed is expressed as a percentage of the maximum amount the blood could carry at 100 percent. At sea level, typical saturation values are 97 to 99 percent in healthy people. At 5,000 feet it might drop to 95 percent and at around 10,000 feet it may dip to 90 percent. Somewhere around 10,000 feet there is a big change and oxygen saturation can drop to 80 percent or below.

Acclimatizing to various altitudes can help improve these numbers up to a point. Know there is individual variability in the acclimation process and there is even variability among native dwellers at any altitude, beginning at birth.

Children born at various altitudes have similar oxygen saturations during the first 24 to 48 hours of life and the values change within the first four months of life. For example, newborns in Denver, Colorado (5,280 feet, considered moderate altitude) have saturation levels of 85 to 97 percent while those born in Leadville, Colorado (10,152 feet, considered high altitude) are 85 to 93 percent.

Though the time periods noted in a medical column weren’t exactly the same, it is interesting to note that after four months, the Leadville infants were between 89 and 93 percent saturation during wakefulness. Healthy, awake infants under the age of two measured between 90 and 99 percent in Denver. So there was some shifting up, particularly on the low end.

You can pick up a pulse oximeter at many local pharmacies. A common use for these devices includes measuring oxygen saturation in people with compromised lung function. Pilots and mountain climbers also use the devices to determine when supplemental oxygen might be necessary to avoid fainting.

I’ve been playing with an oximeter to look at oxygen saturation at my house (roughly 5,000 ft. measured on my Garmin) and Frisco, Colorado (roughly 9,100 ft.) I did this because much of my fun, training and racing is done at altitudes of 7,500 ft. or more and I was curious if my oxygen saturation changed much between the Front Range and the Colorado mountains.

The next blog will be more about what I’ve noticed in my experiment of one.

Emergency response for endurance athletes when there’s no cell coverage

guest — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 18:53:04 GMT

In Colorado, it is not unusual to not have cell phone service in many foothills and mountain locations. This can be a very dangerous situation.

Case in point, a couple of days ago local rider Barb Schultz told me a story about her neighbor Chad (don't have Chad's last name). He was mountain biking on a local trail when he sustained a serious injury to his upper leg. The short story is that the front fork on his mountain bike suffered catastrophic failure. The break ended up slicing his upper leg wide open.

Chad was only a quarter of a mile from the ranger station when the accident occurred, but he had no cell coverage and couldn’t call for help. Luckily, Chad is a medical student and knew how to take care of himself until he could walk out of the single track and get help. He used his jersey as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. He did get help and eventually received 32 stitches in his "fillet gash" to repair the injury.

Barb told me that Chad’s story is one good reason why she carries something called SPOT. It is an emergency response system that uses satellites (not cell towers) to call for help when you really need it. I hadn’t heard of it before.

Barb uses the personal tracker (I think) although there are options to have the application downloaded to your smart phone. The service plans can be found here.

Because Barb frequently rides alone, her husband can watch her on the website and know where she is and if she’s still moving along at the expected rate.

I’m often on trails and roads, with and without other people, where there’s no cell coverage. There have been two occasions I can think of where someone was injured and no one in the group had cell coverage. We were able to get help by riding out to a car or to phone coverage, but having an emergency response option would have been great.

I’m currently investigating the various options.

Blog Posts From Active Expert: Gale Bernhardt Tagged With trail_running

Pulse Oximetry, Blood Oxygen Saturation and Altitude Acclimatization

Emergency response for endurance athletes when there’s no cell coverage