Acute Mountain Sickness, Hypoxia, Hypobaria and Exercise Duration each Affect Heart Rate

Abstract

In this study, we quantified the changes in post-exercise resting heart rate (HRrst) associated with acute mountain sickness (AMS), and compared the effects of hypobaric hypoxia (HH) and normobaric hypoxia (NH) on HRrst. We also examined the modulating roles of exercise duration and exposure time on HRrst. Each subject participated in 2 of 6 conditions: normobaric normoxia (NN), NH, or HH (4 400 m altitude equivalent) combined with either 10 or 60 min of moderate cycling at the beginning of an 8-h exposure. AMS was associated with a 2 bpm higher HRrst than when not sick, after taking into account the ambient environment, exercise duration, and SpO2. In addition, HRrst was elevated in both NH and HH compared to NN with HRrst being 50% higher in HH than in NH. Participating in long duration exercise led to elevated resting HRs (0.8-1.4 bpm higher) compared with short exercise, while short exercise caused a progressive increase in HRrst over the exposure period in both NH and HH (0.77-1.2 bpm/h of exposure). This data suggests that AMS, NH, HH, exercise duration, time of exposure, and SpO2 have independent effects on HRrst. It further suggests that hypobaria exerts its own effect on HRrst in hypoxia. Thus NH and HH may not be interchangeable environments.