Wait that was super short. I liked this article I wanted it to be longer.

I wonder if they're confusing the cause and effect.

Do people who live above 8k feet not die of heart disease or do people with heart disease find it too difficult to live above 8k feet so only people without heart disease live above 8k feet?

I live at 7200 feet and I know several people who have moved to lower altitudes because it's "too hard to breath" here.

> The best defense is to start at 5,000 feet and stay there for 3 days, drinking water like crazy and resting. Then, come up to the higher elevation and give yourself a day or two to adjust. That usually works.

This is crazy to me as I usually only get 1 acclimation night in before going up. I’m curious how people can find their limits / needs?

As a child I lived for two years at ~11k ft (La Paz, Bolivia). I can vouch for the impact of both Acute Mountain Sickness and the sun at that elevation.

"Living at high altitude reduces risk of dying from heart disease", but you're litereally locked in your house because the sun takes every chance to fry you. I'm okay with not reducing my risk of dying from heart disease.

One other fun thing about living at altitude is that the recipes you use need to be redesigned because the boiling point of water is lower.

I lived at 10,600 feet for 6.5 weeks last summer, coming from essentially sea level.

I felt like I was adjusted 90% adjusted about 2 weeks in, like I could walk at a normal speed. My Garmin watch agreed with this adaption. However, trying to mountain bike with the locals was hilarious... even at week 6 I barely started to be able to keep up on climbs. I rode my mountain bike nearly every day, or at minimum took a several mile hike

Near the end I had a bender with some coworkers. I started developing a persistent "altitude" cough after that that never really went away until I got back down to sea level. The cough disappeared in 36 hours. And wow, did I feel like superman when I got back racing my peers.

Did you catch the important point in my story though? I live an active life style at sea level, but man, people living in small towns in the mountains _love_ the outdoors. We were active every day of the week: riding, hiking, climbing, etc. I could definitely see how altitude helps with cardiovascular health, but it's already been proven that leading an active lifestyle is one of the most amazing things you can do for your health and happiness.

On the other hand, if it’s too high it’ll just kill your brain cells: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-cells-into-...

When I did a 2 week road trip from Chengdu to lijiang a couple of decades ago, we spent the first two days of the trip just acclimating on the Tibetan plateau at 3000 meters or at the town near siguniang. Then we hit places like daocheng (3500 meters), we drive through passes at 5000 meters, Litang town at 4000 meters (about the height of mt rainier). The biggest problem I had was the lack of vegetables that high, my teeth really got tired of eating judt meat and potatoes. The places were all populated though with Tibetans, they just lived up there as if it was the most normal thing in the world (heck, litang had 60k people living at 4k meters, that seemed crazy to me).