Nicole at altitude
I traveled to Peru to play in the mountains for 6 weeks in May and June 2023, all of which was at a higher altitude ranging from 10,000 to 16,500 feet. Peru is incredible — beautiful mountains, amazing flora and fauna, great fruit, yummy potatoes, and incredibly lovely people; I highly recommend. While I was having this amazing Peruvian experience, I was also super curious to feel and watch how my body responded.
In general I felt okay the entire time and had a better experience than I did traveling to the mountains of Bolivia in 2017, potentially my breathwork practice helped. I didn’t experience headaches or feel completely exhausted and out of breath. If I went up hill, I had to be patient and give my body time to recover (lower the heart rate and catch my breath), but I did recover and it was okay. This recovery time progressively got shorter as the days at altitude continued. The first few nights I had crazy dreams, I don’t think I had much deep sleep, more REM sleep. I also noticed, I wanted to mouth breath more often, I had to remind myself that nose breathing would help in the long run. I started to sleep at night with a small piece of tape over my lips. This helped a bunch, I breathed through my nose (which prevented my nose from getting all clogged up) and my sleep seemed to be more restful and deep.
I’m a regular runner, I didn’t want to try running in Peru until my 4th day above 10,000 feet. I walked uphill and then tried running downhill; it felt okay, but my heart was definitely racing, as if I’d been running uphill. I had food poisoning (was a little too adventurous with food from the market) on the 6th day and definitely took a step backwards - the next few days were tough, my body didn’t have any extra energy or oxygen. Yet I did recover from this and then felt good again. I started to regularly run a little bit - however I stuck to downhill or flat, uphill just felt too hard.
In terms of my breathing practice, I struggled with any breath holds or slower cadence breathing initially. At first I was only able to do slower breathing at 6 second intervals. After about a week, I was able to comfortably breath in and out at 15 second intervals while lying down. However when we travelled up higher, to 13,000 feet I then returned to 6 or 10 second slower paced breathing lying down. If I was sitting up, I struggled. Overtime things got a little easier, but not nearly as easy as in Vermont, close to sea level. However when I was feeling winded, I focused on evening out my inhales and exhales (even if it was just for 2 or 3 seconds), relaxing the shoulders, and breathing in and out through the nose - this helped immensely.
During my first night’s sleep in Huaraz at 10,000ft2, according to my wearable device (Oura Ring) my blood oxygen went down to 92% (typically I’m at 99%), my heart rate went up by 13%, and my heart rate variability (indicator of autonomic nervous system capacity – stress level) plummeted to 43% lower than normal. Initially my respiratory rate stayed within my normal range. However after my sickness, my respiratory rate increased slightly, roughly by 3%. After 3 nights at 10,000 feet, my blood oxygen level increased to 95%, but then it didn’t anymore. After 2 weeks at 10,000 feet, I travelled up in elevation and roughly spent the next 2.5 weeks at 13,000-16,500 feet. Amazingly my blood oxygen stayed around 94-95%. My body prioritized other acclimatization aspects (rebuilding plasma, creating new capillaries, etc.) instead of getting my blood oxygen to 99% like it is in Vermont. My blood oxygen didn’t increase to 98%, 6 weeks into my trip and when I slept a 6,700 feet, and then again in Lima, at sea level. My blood oxygen never got to 99% until last night, my first night back in Vermont.
Three weeks after my arrival, my resting heart rate while I slept returned to average, my heart rate variability had also increased to my typical range. For the rest of the trip my heart rate variability and resting heart rate were within my normal range.
Overall I felt okay the entire time. I felt like I good do some gentle jogging after 4 days. After a couple weeks, I felt mostly normal. However according to my body metrics and my wearable device, my body was still acclimatizing the entire 6 weeks while I was above 10,000 feet. Scientific theory agrees with my wearable device - it typically takes 45 days to fully acclimatize to 10,000 feet. When I watched and talked with others new to altitude in Peru, those that were younger and those that were more cardio and respiratory fit did better. And we all can help our body adjust to weird and different physiological happenings - take a moment, relax the shoulders and breath into the lower ribs, inhaling and exhaling through the nose in a soft and quiet manner.