Better Health: Smart Health Commentary Better Health (TM): smart health commentary

Latest Posts

Wilderness Medical Society Publishes Prevention And Treatment Tips For Altitude Sickness

Led by Andrew Luks MD and his colleagues, the Wilderness Medical Society has published Consensus Guidelines for the Prevention and Treatment of Acute Altitude Illness (Wild Environ Med 2010:21;146-155). These guidelines are intended to provide clinicians about best evidence-based practices, and were derived from the deliberations of an expert panel, of which I was a member. The disorders considered were acute mountain sickness (AMS), high altitude cerebral edema (HACE), and high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE). The guidelines present the main prophylactic and therapeutic modalities for each disorder and provide recommendations for their roles in disorder management. The guidelines also provide suggested approaches to prevention and management of each disorder that incorporate the recommendations.

In outline format, here is what can be found in these Guidelines: Read more »

This post, Wilderness Medical Society Publishes Prevention And Treatment Tips For Altitude Sickness, was originally published on Healthine.com by Paul Auerbach, M.D..

Why Only Some People Experience High Altitude Sickness

Andrew in Colorado, Summer 2011

Hi! Greetings from Breckenridge, Colorado. At 10,000 feet, I am told it is the highest resort town in North America. The Rocky Mountain scenery is breathtaking. But there’s a problem for about one in four of us who visit here, especially people like me who live at sea level. We can get hit with high altitude sickness and a few days ago, I was one of the unlucky ones.

What happens is your body isn’t used to the thin air and your blood has difficulty getting enough oxygen to your body. It usually happens at altitudes over 8,500 feet. You get an ongoing headache, you feel tired, you have insomnia (I was sleepless for two nights!), you could have nausea and certainly fatigue. Drinking lots of water and passing up alcohol can help, but even then some people have problems.

When I finally saw a family doctor – Doctor P.J. – he told me it’s genetic. Some people have trouble “acclimatizing” and others don’t, but there’s no easy way to know who will be affected before you make the climb. Now that I know I have difficulty I will take a prescription medicine (Diamox) ahead of coming up here again.

Doctor P.J. says even Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Andrew's Blog*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

Read more »

How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

Read more »

See all interviews »

Latest Cartoon

See all cartoons »

Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

Read more »

The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

Read more »

Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

Read more »

See all book reviews »

Commented - Most Popular Articles