Brain Damage: Yet Another Reason to Fly Fish Instead of Climbing Mountains
Original Post:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TroutUndergroundFlyFishBlog/~3/177238510/
It’s not hard to argue that most fly fishers suffer from some form of dementia, but at least no one’s proved it scientifically.
That’s why it would suck to be a high-altitude mountain climber, what with a bunch of scientists proving that brain damage results from high-altitude climbing (and not from falling on your head either).
Only 1 in 13 of the Everest climbers had a normal MRI; the amateur showed frontal subcortical lesions, and the remainder had cortical atrophy and enlargement of Virchow-Robin spaces but no lesions. Among the remaining amateurs, 13 showed symptoms of high-altitude illness, 5 had subcortical irreversible lesions, and 10 had innumerable widened Virchow-Robin spaces.
We conclude that there is enough evidence of brain damage after high altitude climbing; the amateur climbers seem to be at higher risk of suffering brain damage than professional climbers.
Woo-hoo! Sure, the rest of the outdoor world considers fly fishers two steps below couch potatoes on the sporting food chain, but unlike those brain damaged climbers, nobody has to cut our food into small pieces and feed it to us.
(And yes, it’s a day where I’m looking for victories wherever I can find them).
See you on Everest, Tom Chandler.
Technorati Tags: mountain climbing, brain damage
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