Abstract
This article is an autobiographical account of my career as a human physiologist. I have spent 55 years traversing mountains, continents, seas, and skies, carrying out research in the laboratories of several international institutions as well as in the field. My scientific roots, approach to the mountains and altitude populations, both in Europe and in Asia, together with an account of my experimental studies at altitude, including extreme conditions, shall be presented together with pertinent occasional reflections of a personal nature.
Highlights
The Editors' kind invitation to recall my research activity in ‘extreme’ conditions, at altitude, over the last five decades reached me a few months before my eightieth birthday in the course of the third stage of my retirement itinerary
In the 1990s, I worked in the Khumbu Valley at Namche Bazar and Kumjung and, on repeated occasions, at the Pyramid laboratory, the permanent structure built at Lobuche (5,050 m) by professor Ardito Desio who was a famous Himalayan geologist, on muscle aerobic and anaerobic metabolism in man in the course of altitude acclimatization with Claudio Marconi, Bruno Grassi, Mauro Marzorati, Bengt Kayser, Marco Narici, Michael Meyer, and several younger colleagues as well as on blood oxygen affinity in acclimatized Caucasians and altitude Sherpas with Michele Samaja and Arsenio Veicsteinas [3]
Considering the limited reduction of maximum cardiac output and the 40% increase in blood Hb concentration, to explain these results, two hypotheses were put forward, i.e., (a) that the release of oxygen in the muscles in peripheral capillaries could have been impaired by packing of erythrocytes due to extremely high Hct and/or (b) that the blood was shunted away from the muscles to reduce the load on the heart due to increased viscosity
Summary
The Editors' kind invitation to recall my research activity in ‘extreme’ conditions, at altitude, over the last five decades reached me a few months before my eightieth birthday (born 21 October 1932 in Milano, Italy) in the course of the third (and the last) stage of my retirement itinerary. A number of young soldiers, students, and some patients as subjects for his experiments These were carried out in the laboratory of Torino (ergographic recordings, measurements of gas exchange, and tracings of brain pulsations in patients exposed to severe hypoxia in a small hypobaric chamber) and at the Capanna Margherita (recordings of periodic breathing, probably the first in the literature, and observations that acute hypoxia, despite blood O2 desaturation, does not affect the maximum mechanical performance by small muscle masses, such as those of the forearm (handgrip) and the arms). The latter, based at 2,850 m, were regularly making use of supplemental oxygen when operating at above 4,000 m and used to spend several hours a day on the ground in the altitude range of 4,500–6,300 m. They were apparently very well acclimatized from the respiratory standpoint, as proven by the perfect altitude tolerance when stranded
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