Pentagon's Uphill Battle: Afghan Campaign Spurs Military to Seek Remedy for Troops' Altitude Sickness

The $2.5 million research project, funded by the Pentagon, aims to solve a difficult problem for the military. When troops are parachuted into high-altitude battlefields, many come down with acute mountain sickness. Accompanying headaches, nausea, dizziness and fatigue can be so debilitating some troops have trouble standing, much less maneuvering in combat.

Sounds like something they should have done about the time we first went into Afghanistan.

They have that chart of percentages of un-acclimatized troops who will get sick at a certain altitude, why not just acclimatize troops to higher altitude? Or, just acclimatize those who would be rapidly deployed to elevations over 3000m? I don't know what the base levels are in Afghanistan, but I would think they could be pretty high. If they aren't, why not just send troops out to train at 2500m or something higher than they are normally at? Seems like common sense. Then again, as buzz says, and the war being 9 years on....

Soldiers using diamox collapsed from dehydration? Stunning!

Andes6000 wrote:Soldiers using diamox collapsed from dehydration? Stunning!

Where does it say that in the article??

80% get sick?!

well, duh!

Does anyone know if there is a relation between blood groups and acclimatization?

borutbk wrote:Does anyone know if there is a relation between blood groups and acclimatization?

I'm no expert but in my readings, I have never come across any relationship. Out of curiosity, are blood groups related to anything medically speaking??... or is referring to blood groups, kind of an old paradigm?

radson wrote:

borutbk wrote:Does anyone know if there is a relation between blood groups and acclimatization?

I'm no expert but in my readings, I have never come across any relationship. Out of curiosity, are blood groups related to anything medically speaking??... or is referring to blood groups, kind of an old paradigm?

I mean medically - speaking.
I never came across any relationship in any reading either. Sort of heard things and wondered...

EDIT: well, there is also this sentence in the link above:
"The new research aims to develop a simple, inexpensive blood test that will predict which soldiers are most likely to get altitude sickness."
2nd EDIT: at 2nd thought, it can't be that. Soldiers would already know their blood group.

I knew a doctor that did research for the Pentagon on altitude sickness. He looked at peoples' eyes, specifically the blood vessels in your eyeballs. He claimed he could predict susceptibility to altitude sickness based on the condition of your eyes.

Sickle cell anemia would cause crisis at altitude, but likely screened out already