In Response to “The Impact of Footwear and Packweight on Injury and Illness Among Long-Distance Hikers”
✍ Scribed by Michael Bogdasarian
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2010
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 99 KB
- Volume
- 21
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1080-6032
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
South Dakota, Texas, and Washington) and the states with the lowest altitude (Delaware, Louisiana, Florida, Rhode Island, and New Jersey).
Our data show that the suicide death rate in the Rocky Mountain states remains higher and that the greatest differential was between the mountain states and the lowest altitude states. We then plotted state altitude to state suicide death rate and performed regression analysis to get a correlation coefficient of r ϭ 0.76 (Figure). A literature search shows that mood state is worsened with incremental hypobaric hypoxia, and that the higher the altitude the lesser the duration needed to produce mood change. 2-4 Also, literature shows that oxygen supplementation improves mood at altitude. 5 While altitude-induced hypoxia can worsen mood leading to an increased suicide death rate in mountain states, the exact biochemical mechanism for producing this association between altitude and suicide death rate remains unknown.