Mountain Life

It’s Good to Get High

By Christie Aschwanden, 3-16-05

It's official—mountain living is good for your heart. A study published this week in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health concluded that living in a mountainous area seems to offer some protection from heart disease mortality.

Researchers from the University of Athens Medical School tracked the health of 1,150 residents of three Greek villages. The villages were comparable in size and residents lead similar lifestyles. The difference was that two of the villages stood on the low plains, while the third lies in a mountainous area more than a half-mile above sea level.

Over the course of the 14-year study, fewer participants from the mountain village died of coronary heart disease compared to those living in the other villages. The design of the study did not allow researchers to home in on the mechanism behind the protective effect they found, but they hypothesize that high-altitude exercise may provide the magic potion. At altitude, the body must work harder to perform the same work, so mountain residents may get more benfits from their exercise than those living lower, the researchers write.

It sounds reasonable, but the mountain village studied here was just 950 meters, or 3116 feet, which makes me wonder how applicable the findings are to the mountain west, where 3,116 feet is considered lowland. On the one hand, it could mean that even people living in, say, eastern Colorado might get a health boost from the altitude. But it's also reasonable to expect that there may be an upper limit at which altitude goes from being a benefit to a harm, and if so, some Western towns surely pass this threshold.

The size of the benefit seen here was also fairly modest—8% of lowland men had died of heart disease by the end of the study, compared to 5% of mountain men. Women didn't seem to get much benefit at all—only a 1% difference in death rates for heart disease.

Still, I know I feel better living in the mountains, and surely that counts for something. I'll stick with the Mountain Gazette motto: "If in doubt, go higher."

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.