[Stoves] CO- and Oxygen-affinity to haemoglobine

[Otto Formo]

Dear Andrew,
May be your urban myth has some sense of thruth,
"Climbing" Kilimanjaro some ten years back we noticed that the less trained people had less "problems" facing the thin air of the summit.
We also have had incidents of trained and Olympic champions having huge problems with hightsickness climbing or even hikeing in high altitudes.

This does not mean that I recomend people to start smoking.
But the "fact" that smokers are "used to suffer" from "lack" of oxygen and their bodies has adapt to operate "normaly" during these circumstanses, even at lower altitudes, like sea level in NYC.....:)

Otto

> From: andrew heggie [list at sylva.icuklive.co.uk]
> Sent: 2010-10-27 09:03:24 MEST
> To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves [stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org]
> Subject: Re: [Stoves] CO- and Oxygen-affinity to haemoglobine
> 
> On Wednesday 27 October 2010 06:37:49 veenu joon wrote:
> > Dear stovers
> > Yes our bodies do produce some CO. But there are no visible symptoms of
> > CO poisning for this small amount. We lack good literature on chronic
> > exposure to small doses of CO on our bodies.  CO endogenous production
> > results in a blood COHb% levels of 0.4-0.9% in a healthy unexposed
> > person (Marks et al., 2002; Widdop, 2002).
> 
> I wonder what this increases to in a habitual tobbacco smoker?
> 
> I'm told smokers have less problems acclimatising to high altitude because 
> their bodies have adapted to lower blood oxygen from the chronic affects 
> of CO on their haemoglobin, possibly an urban myth.
> 
> AJH
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Stoves mailing list
> 
> to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
> Stoves mailing list
> 
> to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
> http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org
> 
> for more Biomass Cooking Stoves,  News and Information see our web site:
> http://www.bioenergylists.org/
> Stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org
> http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org
>