SYMPTOMS OF ACUTE MOUNTAIN SICKNESS - AMS, HACE, HAPE ON KILIMANJARO

At around 3000 meters, (almost 10,000 feet.) above sea level, some people trekking Kilimanjaro will experience mild AMS: headaches, nausea and a feeling of malaise, similar to the onset of a cold. Appetite is diminished and sleep is restless. If you continue to ascend without acclimatization, the headache may become far worse: a bright, migraine-intense pain that crashes on your senses in relentless thuds. It is not something you want to provoke. It can turn your entire Mt. Kilimanjaro trek into sheer miserable endurance, like a continuous thumping hangover.

Moderate AMS headache is not helped by medication. Nausea may progress to actual vomiting. You will feel increasingly weak and tired, out of breath and unsteady on your feet. If you cannot walk a straight line and the problem is not simply extreme fatigue or hypothermia, you must not continue to climb. To push on at this stage is to invite severe AMS and inevitable summit failure. You need to retreat at least between 600 to 1200 meters depending on your severity to a lower altitude to enable your body to adjust to the changes that accompany acclimatization. This is when a rest day is most useful.

An Uhuru Trails by AfricanMecca itinerary allows rest time as a standard acclimatization strategy. You can still reach the summit once your symptoms recede. If your Kilimanjaro challenge tour timetable is too tight, tough luck: you are not going to make it. Mild cerebral swelling due to oxygen starvation diminishes coordination and ends in ataxia or lack of muscular coordination, balance and speech. This is a neural condition of severe AMS: progressive shutdown of the central nervous system with inability to walk at all, necessitating stretcher evacuation.

Less often, severe AMS leads to High Altitude Pulmonary Edema, (HAPE), swelling and leaking of the tiny sacs that exchange used carbon dioxide for fresh oxygen in the lungs. This is a result of low air pressure, depleted oxygen, cold and overexertion. It is life-threatening. You may have blue lips, pulse rate over 130, a cough, rattling chest and pink phlegm. You need to descend immediately.

A similar phenomenon in the brain causes High Altitude Cerebral Edema, (HACE) due to fluid leakage from capillaries in the brain causing swelling of brain tissue with confusion, slurred speech, hallucinations, psychosis, collapse and coma. They both follow from climbing too high, too fast, or staying there: as when trekkers on precarious adventures to Kilimanjaro ascend to Crater Camp for the overnight. Symptoms of many different forms of AMS may occur simultaneously, ruining your once for all Mount Kilimanjaro hiking trip. But many of them are preventable.

Review Below The Complete Guide On High Altitude Sickness For Your Kilimanjaro Climb

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