YOU have to be special to live 4000 metres up a mountain. And the people of Tibet are very special indeed. They have a unique blood chemistry that allows them to cope with the thin, oxygen-poor mountain air; an adaptation not discovered until now. It may suggest novel ways to treat hypoxia in people at lower elevations.
Tibetans’ blood carries very little oxygen – so little that a sea-level doctor would prescribe supplemental oxygen. Yet, paradoxically, they manage to be just as active and use just as much oxygen per minute as people at sea level.
To understand how, a team…
