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The World's Highest Science Lab Is on Top of Mount Everest

Real science is being done on the world's tallest peak.
Image: Mike Grocott

How do you do science five and a half miles above sea level? Very quickly, with specialized equipment, and with people who seriously know what they’re doing.

To do research at the summit of Mount Everest, you need scientists who know how to climb one of the world’s most dangerous peaks and test subjects who are willing to have precious blood drawn while their body is already being seriously taxed (and is severely deprived of oxygen). But the work is worthwhile, says Mike Grocott, a researcher at the University of Southampton and part of the Xtreme Everest team of scientists that works up there.

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Take, for instance, their latest discovery about how Type 2 diabetes works: On a climb in 2007, the team discovered that very fit people showed insulin resistance, a marker of the disease, after being exposed to high altitudes for several weeks. That can tell us a bit about how the disease works in obese people at sea level.

“In these people, the insulin resistance wasn’t there at sea level—very simplistically, in obese people, the fat cells often have a lack of oxygen, which we think is one reason why they show glucose intolerance,” Grocott told me. “This finding supports that idea. When you’re hypoxic, this can happen.”

Essentially, obese people are showing similar symptoms to healthy people who have spent weeks gasping for air on the world’s tallest peak. The work was just published in PLOS One.

Members of Xtreme Everest Image: Mike Grocott

While that discovery could turn out to be important for treating the disease, the more interesting part is how the research was done in the first place. Sure, science is done in Antarctica, under the oceans, and in space, but near the summit of Mount Everest has to be one of the most dangerous places to conduct any study.

Most expeditions have enough trouble making it to the summit and back with only the necessary survival equipment—oxygen tanks, ice picks, and lots of warm layers—but Grocott and his team had to lug up car batteries to power instruments, blood sampling tools, and computers that can withstand the elements.

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“It’s tough even at base camp—the logistical setup there is much like a sea level lab, but it’s still very high up,” he said. “Higher up, you’re working with car batteries. You’ve got to find people who know the technology and how to do the science but are also good climbers.”

Eventually, the team summited and made measurements at an altitude of 29,028 feet, the highest point on Earth.

Most of the scientists on the team are critical care physicians who have worked in a lot of extreme locations, and the entire climb was undertaken in a different manner than most Everest expeditions. Grocott says the team left later in the season and took their time—they weren’t focused on summiting and were prepared to turn around if they hit adverse conditions.

The team also did the world's highest exercise tests. Image: Mike Grocott

“We deliberately climbed late so we wouldn’t hit congestion, and we didn’t need to summit, but we were trying to get measurements from as high as we could. Obviously there’s a lot of tough climbing involved,” he said. “We were confident we could do it safely.”

That first climb took place in 2007, and another took place last year. Grocott says Xtreme Everest is “very much an ongoing project,” with more climbs planned for the future, and a study about the neuropsychological changes climbers go through while climbing coming out in the near future.  More climbs are planned for the future—there's still science to do at the world's highest laboratory.