Hey guys! Today Im covering a very important
topic for any higher altitude trekker.
I would recommend watching this video all
the way to the end.
Because I'm talking about life-saving drugs
today.
We call them LSDs, life-saving drugs. Time
and again we've seen that these three medicines
have come to the rescue of trekkers, even
in dire situations of severe cases of AMS
HAPE and HACE.
I'm talking about Diamox Nifedipine and Dexamethasone.
So in this video, Im not going to give you
a medical discourse on these medicines, but
I'm going to share some Insider observations
that we've seen over the past 10 years of
running treks in the Himalayas.
And I am Swathi, from Indiahikes and you're
watching Trek With Swathi.
The first medicine we are talking about today
is Diamox or Acetozolamide, its medical name.
Now, Diamox has almost become a household name
and
I'm not surprised because that's how important it is.
You may know that we use it to prevent AMS
and also to treat AMS.
How it works, is that it helps you acclimatize faster.
It makes your blood thinner, so your heart
pumps oxygenated blood a lot more easily to
your body parts, and it also makes you breathe
faster and deeper taking in more oxygen, so
it has to acclimatize faster.
Now when it comes to prevent course trekkers
always ask me, you know, which trek should
I take it on, I'm going on this trek should I take it?
Well, there's one thumb rule, just look at
the altitude your climbing to.
Are you climbing above 12,000 feet?
If it's a no, then you don't really need a
course of Diamox, that is treks like Kedarkantha,
Dayara Bugyal, Deoriatal, Brahmatal, on none
of these treks, you need to go on a preventive
course of Diamox.
But that doesn't mean that you cannot get
AMS on these treks.
So you must always have a strip of Diamox
with you in your medical kit.
If you're taking with Indiahikes, of course
our Trek Leaders have all these medicines
and their high Altitude medical kit, but you
must also make it a practice to carry a stripe
of Diamox with you.
When it comes to taking Diamox, trekkers have
two major worries.
So I'm just going to sort that out.
The first thing, they say is it makes me pee
more often, in the middle of the night I might
have to get up and go pee.
Well, that's really not much of problem guys
because Diamox is a diuretic, it is meant
to make you pee more often.
That's how it works.
You don't really have to get up every day
and pee more often it might happen once in
four days, but that is okay for the benefits
that Diamox gives you.
The second worry that they have is, that the
side effects you get a tingling sensation
in your fingertips, maybe around your face.
Well, what we have observed is that if you
reduce the dosage of your Diamox, so we usually
used to recommend 250mg earlier as a prevent
course but now we started recommending half
a tablet. That's 125 mg.
We've noticed that the side effects drop down
drastically, but the effect of Diamox as a
medicine to help you acclimatise, that doesn't
come down.
So you can reduce your course of Diamox take
125 mg every 12 hours as a preventive course,
but don't compromise on your curative course
if you already have AMS then take Diamox as recommended.
We have a lot of reading material on how
much Diamox to take, when to take, in the
description below.
So make sure you look at those.
The second life-saving drug I'm talking about
is Nifedipine.
Now you may have heard of Nifedipine, it is
used to treat
high altitude pulmonary edema or HAPE.
Now when you have HAPE, there's a lot of pressure around your lungs.
So with that pressure, there's a lot of fluids entering your lungs making it very difficult
to breathe, your essentially drowning in your own body fluids and is every bit as scary
as it sounds.
This is the Nifedipine comes in.
It reduces the pressure around your lungs
stops those liquids from oozing into your
lungs, give you a lot of relief lets you breathe
and also give you window to get out of that
altitude to a lower safer altitude.
It is usually administered in two stages.
First, you give the patient a 10 mg dose
along with Diamox if required and then wait
for around 20 minutes to half an hour and
give the next 10 mg.
So your basically you looking to see if the medicine
is having any effect on the patient.
Usually you should see this effect in half
an hour to one hour, you should see the patient
feeling a lot more relieved to actually trek
by himself and leave high altitudes.
There is one thing I've noticed about Nifedipine that worries me.
A lot of trekkers, experience trekkers and Trek
leaders often hesitate to give Nifedipine
to a patient suffering from HAPE.
And that's not okay.
What do you usually think is that if the patient
has lower blood pressure already, this might
be dangerous to him.
But that's a myth because Nifedipine comes in controlled doses and you even administer
it in controlled doses which is why I told you about the two-stage process
of administering Nifedipine.
And if it's a case of HAPE, it's already an
emergency,
you have to choose between Nifidepine and death.
So make a wise choice.
The third life-saving drug were talking about
is Dexamethasone or Dex.
Now Dex is used to treat High Altitude Cerebral Edema, which is a fluid accumulation in your
brain causes bad headaches, it gives you a
loss of muscular coordination sometimes even
hallucinations.
Now how dexamethasone helps, is that It reduces
the inflammation in your brain, reducing the
water accumulation in your brain and it also
is a steroid.
So give you a burst of energy.
In both ways, it gives you a lot of relief
and it gives you energy to get yourself out
of high altitude.
It comes in small doses in our country and
around 0.5 mg and usually administered
in doses of 4 mg and it's a steroid so you
have to wean it off even after you start you have to
continue the dosage and then stop it.
Interestingly, we've noticed that Dex is also
very effective in treating mild symptoms of AMS.
We administered in small doses along with
Diamox and the effects are very good.
There are also studies that show that you
can take Dex as a preventive course to prevent
AMS from happening.
So there are lots of studies going on about
these three life-saving drugs.
It's still a lot of work in progress because
high altitudes medicine
has not been studied too much.
But what we know is that, these three are life-saving drugs at high altitude.
Diamox is used when you have AMS.
Nifidepine and Dexamethasone
when you have HAPE and HACE, mostly for emergency
cases, let's hope you don't ever have to use
them.
All of these medicines thers is a certain way of
administering them, you should know about
it before you actually go about administering it.
If your trekking with Indiahikes your Trek
leader will have all of these medicines and
are trained medically to use all of these
medicines.
So any symptoms approach your trek leader.
If you not trekking with Indiahikes then please
make sure you learn about how to administer
these medicines.
I put in a lot of links in the descriptions.
There are also other videos that I've shared
in the description below.
So make sure you go through all of that if
you're going on a high altitude trek.
If you have any questions, drop in a comment,
I'll help you out.
If you've had AMS, HAPE, HACE, share your
experience with us.
We would really love to learn from your experience.
Make sure you also share this video with others
because we really want everybody to know about
these medicines before they get on to higher altitude.
So that's about three life-saving drugs.
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I am Swathi from Indiahikes and you're
watching Trek With Swathi.
