High-altitude exercise performance and acute mountain sickness unchanged following cold water habituation

Abstract

Existing literature suggests cold habituation is capable of cross-adapting submaximal exercise ventilatory, cardiac, and catecholamine responses with normobaric hypoxia. No data exists investigating cold-to-altitude cross adaptation within real-world applicable conditions of hypobaric hypoxia. This investigation suggests that habituation to repeated cold-water immersion does not advantageously cross adapt those subsequently exposed to hypobaric hypoxia.