AngelFuree
Well-Known Member
Our school has an altitude chamber that takes you up to 25,000ft in pressure. It is made so that pilots can notice the effects altitude/pressure has on your bodies. Well.....it so happens I just got back from it like an hour ago. It was quite the experience! We've always read it in books how hypoxia is bad, blah blah blah.....etc etc....but you don't really know how bad it is until you try it.
The "flight" starts out by having the whole group inside the chamber breathe 100% oxygen at sea level for 30 minutes to reduce nitrogen levels in your blood and thus reduce the risk of decompression sickness. We sat for 30 minutes then "climbed" to 10000ft pressure altitude and came back down to make sure none of us in the chamber had ear block problems. After doing so, we then continued to climb up to 25000ft pressure altitude at an ascent rate of 4000 ft/min. After about 6 minutes, we were up in altitude.
The demonstration begins by having one side of the chamber (two rows of people sitting facing each other) remove their masks at 25K ft. Two volunteers perform different exercises. One person reads cards from a deck, one playing card at a time. Another person tries placing different shaped objects inside a box having different shaped holes for each specific object. The remaining people fill out a questionnaire with a variety of questions including simple math problems, and other simple questions about yourself.
I was one of the persons filling out the questionnaires.
I started filling out the form, and about 15 seconds later, started feeling the effects of it, quickly! The lack of pressure and inability of your body to intake oxygen is amazing. I didn't really notice the difference it was making, but the most apparent symptom was dizziness. Remember, there are many hypoxia symptoms. Anyway, I started feeling dizzy and noticed a subtle, very very very subtle difference in my vision. In about 50 seconds, I was ready to get back on oxygen. I was feeling too uncomfortable and might have passed out if I forced myself to hold it longer.
I got back on pressured 100% oxygen, and WOW. WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW was my reaction. My vision got 100X brighter. I did not realize how much my vision had been affected. My head felt sooo much better immediately.
We then descended to 18000 ft and we did a color test. We took our masks off, lights off (only tiny recessed lights were kept on) and (ok a little bit long to explain here) in the end we were looking at a color image, and stared at it for a while. After about a minute and a half (remember, we're lower so it takes longer to feel the effects of hypoxia) we put our oxygen masks back on. The colors came back to life. It was really cool to experience that. After that, we came back down to ground level. On our way down, someone had an ear block and the instructor/doctor (AME) had to use nasal spray on the guy. It took another 10 minutes to fix his problem and we got back down eventually.
I know it sounds overly dramatic and exaggerated, but it's the pure reality.
It's really amazing what pressure does to you. After going through this, I respect hypoxia.
Some of you guys might be wondering about the time of effective performance (or whatever you call it). It really varies from person to person. The average person can last about 4 minutes in the chamber without much of a problem. I didn't last that long which kinda sucks but oh well. I asked the doctor about that. He mentioned that couch potatoes can last like 7 minutes, from his experience. I'm assuming this has to do with a person's VO2 level?
Anyway, long post short, it was really an eye opening experience!
I'm sure others who have experienced this before could contribute and agree with my experience.
The "flight" starts out by having the whole group inside the chamber breathe 100% oxygen at sea level for 30 minutes to reduce nitrogen levels in your blood and thus reduce the risk of decompression sickness. We sat for 30 minutes then "climbed" to 10000ft pressure altitude and came back down to make sure none of us in the chamber had ear block problems. After doing so, we then continued to climb up to 25000ft pressure altitude at an ascent rate of 4000 ft/min. After about 6 minutes, we were up in altitude.
The demonstration begins by having one side of the chamber (two rows of people sitting facing each other) remove their masks at 25K ft. Two volunteers perform different exercises. One person reads cards from a deck, one playing card at a time. Another person tries placing different shaped objects inside a box having different shaped holes for each specific object. The remaining people fill out a questionnaire with a variety of questions including simple math problems, and other simple questions about yourself.
I was one of the persons filling out the questionnaires.
I started filling out the form, and about 15 seconds later, started feeling the effects of it, quickly! The lack of pressure and inability of your body to intake oxygen is amazing. I didn't really notice the difference it was making, but the most apparent symptom was dizziness. Remember, there are many hypoxia symptoms. Anyway, I started feeling dizzy and noticed a subtle, very very very subtle difference in my vision. In about 50 seconds, I was ready to get back on oxygen. I was feeling too uncomfortable and might have passed out if I forced myself to hold it longer.
I got back on pressured 100% oxygen, and WOW. WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW was my reaction. My vision got 100X brighter. I did not realize how much my vision had been affected. My head felt sooo much better immediately.
We then descended to 18000 ft and we did a color test. We took our masks off, lights off (only tiny recessed lights were kept on) and (ok a little bit long to explain here) in the end we were looking at a color image, and stared at it for a while. After about a minute and a half (remember, we're lower so it takes longer to feel the effects of hypoxia) we put our oxygen masks back on. The colors came back to life. It was really cool to experience that. After that, we came back down to ground level. On our way down, someone had an ear block and the instructor/doctor (AME) had to use nasal spray on the guy. It took another 10 minutes to fix his problem and we got back down eventually.
I know it sounds overly dramatic and exaggerated, but it's the pure reality.
It's really amazing what pressure does to you. After going through this, I respect hypoxia.
Some of you guys might be wondering about the time of effective performance (or whatever you call it). It really varies from person to person. The average person can last about 4 minutes in the chamber without much of a problem. I didn't last that long which kinda sucks but oh well. I asked the doctor about that. He mentioned that couch potatoes can last like 7 minutes, from his experience. I'm assuming this has to do with a person's VO2 level?
Anyway, long post short, it was really an eye opening experience!
I'm sure others who have experienced this before could contribute and agree with my experience.
jk :insane:
