4 ms·

>Ergo, if sufficient adaptation has taken place - and it may not have This tiny little caveat is the entire point of my comment. Happy to converse about other

>Ergo, if sufficient adaptation has taken place - and it may not have This tiny little caveat is the entire point of my comment. Happy to converse about other stuff, but it's a tangential topic at best. >You'd need to show it because for O2 levels to matter, it would need to be the O2 levels experienced by cells that are different. Right, and some of your body's cells are experiencing it differently. How... else would your body know to respond?

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
Suppose you had an internal combustion engine that functions well in 20.9% O2, but very poorly in 19.2% O2. Then a mechanic shows up a lever you can pull that alters the way the engine intakes and processes O2. You move it a bit, and all of a sudden, the engine now functions just as well in 19.2% O2 as 20.9% O2. Now imagine that the engine can measure its own performance, and can move the lever itself ...
- kulahan 3y ago
  This implies that it has some type of sensor which determines if it's at 20.9% or 19.2% in some manner. Those are analogous to whichever cells are experiencing the world differently, so that the lever knows to move.
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
> This tiny little caveat is the entire point of my comment. Happy to converse about other stuff, but it's a tangential topic at best. Renshaw appears to be suggesting/hypothesizing that there is some universal "low O2" effect that leads to higher rates of suicide. I'm saying that this seems unlikely, given that in fully adapted individuals, the cellular environment does not experience low O2. Of course, in non-fully adapted individuals (either because they are still adapting, or because genetic/physiological factors prevent it), this would not be the case. But that still says that there's no "general" low-O2 mechanism that is affecting anyone who lives at altitude. It only suggests that there maybe a low-O2 mechanism that affects some individuals. Whether there is a correlation between suicide rates and altitude adaptation doesn't appear to be easily established.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

Suppose you had an internal combustion engine that functions well in 20.9% O2, but very poorly in 19.2% O2. Then a mechanic shows up a lever you can pull that alters the way the engine intakes and processes O2. You move it a bit, and all of a sudden, the engine now functions just as well in 19.2% O2 as 20.9% O2. Now imagine that the engine can measure its own performance, and can move the lever itself ...

kulahan 3y ago
This implies that it has some type of sensor which determines if it's at 20.9% or 19.2% in some manner. Those are analogous to whichever cells are experiencing the world differently, so that the lever knows to move.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

> This tiny little caveat is the entire point of my comment. Happy to converse about other stuff, but it's a tangential topic at best. Renshaw appears to be suggesting/hypothesizing that there is some universal "low O2" effect that leads to higher rates of suicide. I'm saying that this seems unlikely, given that in fully adapted individuals, the cellular environment does not experience low O2. Of course, in non-fully adapted individuals (either because they are still adapting, or because genetic/physiological factors prevent it), this would not be the case. But that still says that there's no "general" low-O2 mechanism that is affecting anyone who lives at altitude. It only suggests that there maybe a low-O2 mechanism that affects some individuals. Whether there is a correlation between suicide rates and altitude adaptation doesn't appear to be easily established.