Does that mean their heart rate is faster?
Their heart rate’s faster, their cardiac output is faster, and their systemic blood flow is very high. The amount of blood being delivered to the forearm is double that of ours. OK. Now, a couple years ago I was in Hawaii and went up to the top of the volcano on Maui. I was breathing heavily, and my heart was racing. Yep, that’s normal. Is this a genetic adaptation they have, or just something that happens when you go up high? You were reacting a lot more than they do. Their heart rate would be low seventies [beats per minute]. Yours was probably in the nineties, and you were aware of breathing heavily. What the Tibetans have is definitely an increase compared to what we have, but they’re not aware of it. They’re not walking around feeling like, “Whoa, my heart’s really racing.” What do you plan to do in the future to figure out more? We have evidence for a gene for high oxygen saturation of hemoglobin. So one line of future research is going to be to figure out what that gene is. Anot
