Dietary Nitrate Supplementation Does Not Alter Exercise Efficiency at High Altitude - Further Results From the Xtreme Alps Study.

Introduction: Nitrate supplementation in the form of beetroot juice (BRJ) ingestion has been shown to improve exercise tolerance during acute hypoxia, but its effect on exercise physiology remains unstudied during sustained terrestrial high altitude exposure. We hypothesized that performing exercise at high altitude would lower circulating nitrate and nitrite levels and that BRJ ingestion would reverse this phenomenon while concomitantly improving key determinants of aerobic exercise performance.

Methods: Twenty seven healthy volunteers (21 male) underwent a series of exercise tests at sea level (SL, London, 75 m) and again after 5-8 days at high altitude (HA, Capanna Regina Margherita or "Margherita Hut," 4,559 m).

Sustained vasomotor control of skin microcirculation in Sherpas versus altitude-naive lowlanders: Experimental evidence from Xtreme Everest 2.

New Findings: What is the central question of this study? Do Sherpa highlanders, when exposed to graded hypobaric hypoxia, exhibit enhanced vasomotor and neurovascular control to maintain microcirculatory flux, and thus tissue oxygenation, when compared with altitude-naive lowlanders? What is the main finding and its importance? Sherpas, when exposed to hypobaric hypoxia at high altitude, demonstrated superior preservation of their peripheral microcirculatory perfusion, a greater oxygen unloading rate and sustained microvascular reactivity with enhanced vasomotion, when compared with altitude-naive lowlanders. These differences have not been reported previously and may improve our understanding of the multifactorial responses to sustained environmental hypoxia.

Abstract: Enhanced oxygen delivery, consequent to an increased microvascular perfusion, has been postulated to play a key role in the physiological adaptation of Tibetan highlanders to the hypobaric hypoxia encountered at high altitude.

Effects of dietary nitrate on respiratory physiology at high altitude - Results from the Xtreme Alps study.

Nitric oxide (NO) production plays a central role in conferring tolerance to hypoxia. Tibetan highlanders, successful high-altitude dwellers for millennia, have higher circulating nitrate and exhaled NO (E) levels than native lowlanders. Since nitrate itself can reduce the oxygen cost of exercise in normoxia it may confer additional benefits at high altitude.

Systemic oxygen extraction during exercise at high altitude.

Background: Classic teaching suggests that diminished availability of oxygen leads to increased tissue oxygen extraction yet evidence to support this notion in the context of hypoxaemia, as opposed to anaemia or cardiac failure, is limited.

Methods: At 75 m above sea level, and after 7-8 days of acclimatization to 4559 m, systemic oxygen extraction [C(a-v)O2] was calculated in five participants at rest and at peak exercise. Absolute [C(a-v)O2] was calculated by subtracting central venous oxygen content (CcvO2) from arterial oxygen content [Formula: see text] in blood sampled from central venous and peripheral arterial catheters, respectively.