So many of us living in high altitude communities around the country share a similar experience. We love our mountain homes. So much in fact, that we want to share our passion for our beautiful mountain communities with our friends and family from all over the country and beyond. We invite guests to venture to our high elevation towns to visit.
Some of our friends and family are able to pick up right where we last left off with them. It’s no sweat resuming our shared favorite activities like hiking, biking, and skiing. The only hitch seems to be the one on the back of our trucks, where we hook up the rack.
Yet, when other friends and family come into town the experience can be quite different.
Some unfortunate visitors have a difficult time once they arrive at our higher elevation. The last time we saw them at low altitude they were full of energy and capable of keeping up with us with no problems.
It’s all too easy to take our extreme altitude for granted. We write these friends off as being worse for the wear. Maybe them being tired all the time is due to the fact that they have a poor diet. Perhaps the trouble they’re having sleeping is caused by stress.
These are possibilities. However it may be something entirely different, something we may have once experienced, but have long forgotten due to the length of time we’ve called the mountains our home.
What your less fortunate visitors are experiencing is altitude sickness. It’s also referred to as mountain sickness.
Our guests may not recognize it by its symptoms, but mountain sickness is real, and it can be dangerous.
75% of people experience at least some symptoms of Acute Mountain Sickness, or AMS. That means three out of four of our last out-of-town house guests have felt the negative effects of of our higher elevation within their body.
Some of our guests will acclimatize within one to three days. That’s comforting, but that could still shape up to be one to three very uncomfortable days. What a waste.
If they’re just visiting for a couple of days, fatigue, insomnia, headaches, and upset digestion can be a real detriment to the enjoyment of their trip. If they’re staying longer, that first few days can really feel like a woozy eternity.
People not visiting us will never be an acceptable answer, but there is one solution that is 100% effective in preventing our guest’s altitude sickness. They need more oxygen.
There’s always the distinct possibility that our friends’ physiology won’t acclimatize to our lower level of oxygen without help. Sometimes their acclimatization will require that help in the form of oxygenation technologies. This is especially true for the elderly or those with underlying medical conditions.
Adding oxygen at higher altitudes will counteract the causes and the symptoms of AMS. More oxygen also benefits them through faster recovery from the skiing, biking, hiking, and running that we love to do with them when they come into town.
None of our visitors will ever be too keen on us giving them an oxygen tank to drag around, and they won’t be too excited about needing to use a breathing apparatus while they sleep either. Colorado company Altitude Control Technologies offers a viable and non-invasive option for increasing the oxygen within mountain homes. They offer a discreet method of reducing the effective altitude in the living and sleeping spaces to get our guests to that feel good altitude.
Altitude Control Technologies’ oxygen systems are silent and easily controlled by any smartphone, computer, or tablet. They have a 100% success rate in eliminating sickness caused by hypoxic conditions.
Installing ACT’s oxygenation devices inside your guest’s bedrooms will elevate their experience to where it should be.
ACT allows us to transform our homes into places of comfort for all of our out-of-town loved ones and guests from the low-lands. Gone are the days when our in-laws are made to feel like outlaws. Our friends and family no longer have to be unable to enjoy the mountain life we that so greatly want to share with them.
Be sure to download ACT’s FREE ALTITUDE GUEST ROOM TIP CARD
By John Andreula
John Andreula is a twenty-year high elevation resident and a user of ACT’s technology.
