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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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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