eli5 what would the effects be on someone who never left 500 elevation that traveled to 1000 elevation? would it mimic the bends? decompression illness? dementia?
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No, it would take a lot more elevation gain to have strong effects. If you go from 500 to 5000 you might feel out of breath and get a headache, maybe some mild flu-like feeling. But it’s pretty easy to adjust to that change. If you go from 500 to 9000 you will feel it more. But it still wouldn’t be decompression illness. You’d have to go from 500 to something like 25,000 to actually get that.
Not much. I’ve gone from sea level to 3,000′ many times with no issue.
I’ve flown from sea level to 7,000′ one day and hiked to 13,000′ the next and got a headache.
Having gone through rapid decompression from 5,000 to 25,000 feet, I’ll tell you it’s fine. You need extra oxygen if you’re going to stay up at 25k, but you won’t get the bends or other problems. If it happens in real life rather than in a pressure/vacuum tank, the doctors will check you out, but you’ll be fine as long as you’ve got oxygen available.
For most people, going from 500 to 1000 would make your ears pop to equalize the pressure. You wouldn’t even notice a difference otherwise.
Speed of change of elevation would also be a factor, but going from 500foot elevation would be less of a change than going from 6’ to the surface of the pool, 30’ of water is about 1 atmosphere of pressure and there’s no need to worry about the bends. So moving through the atmosphere would have no effect other than the lack of oxygen at altitude which is why you get the headache and flu like symptoms
Essentially nothing. Airliners are typically pressurized to 8,000’ of altitude, and people do just fine.
I live at about 30ft above sea level and work most days at over 2000 feet. Nothing really happens. Your body doesn’t have a reaction to the altitude difference because in terms of air pressure It’s a very small change. 500ft+ difference in water pressure is a massive difference because water is heavy and that massive change in pressure when you go from deep water to the surface is what causes crazy body reactions
this is what happens when you visit, for example, Quito, Ecuador which I have done many time. I live at sea level (0 m) and then land at 2800m (more or less). We spend our days between 2800m and 3500m, sometimes higher. I get a headache after landing and need about a day to get used to the thinner air (lack of oxygen) but then i’m OK.
Personally, we get lifted from 1000m to 3000m in minutes for skiing. That’s a 3000 to 9000 in feet.
Nothing. No problem. Only issue is you need to breathe more, and automatic breathe for the body is not designed to adjust in minutes. You want your breathing to get adapted, bit deeper,
bit more frequent. If not your blood will carry slightly less oxygen making you slightly less accurate.
It’s discouraged to try ski the minute you arrive at 3000m, the first time you get there in the day. You generally exercise and stretch for 20 minutes, then ride. This buys time to adapt.
After that you can repeat 1000-3000m as many time as you want in the day, without having to use any more time to adapt, as you are adapted.
Cause you rest at 1000 at night, next day you better take another 20 min to adapt before skiing as your lungs have gone back to the usual low altitude breathing during the night.
This is not mandatory but reduces a lot the injuries as having slightly less oxygen in the blood will make ski errors 10 times more likely. You are otherwise fine but doing one wrong jump per month is way better than crashing everytime you do your first descent of the day.
This is for extreme sport done semi-professionally. If you ski like grandma you won’t need your body to be 100%. That’s just if you do very high intensity very high risk activities.
Note: sea level to 1000 is basically the same thing. 2000m is risky only if you have a severe medical condition. 3000 you are not 100% even if fit and adapted, 4000m you start to feel bad, it’s dangerous. But all of this is due to lack of oxygen, not because of decompression.
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