Woman's Vegan Diet May Have Played a Role in Her Death on Mount Everest
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This Woman's Vegan Diet May Have Played a Role in Her Death on Mount Everest
A vegan diet in of itself puts the person on the diet in a disadvantage nutritionally. Without additional supplements the dieter can be under the necessary amounts of B12 which allows red blood cells to carry oxygen. Sadly this woman died from altitude sickness which at it's base is a lack of oxygen. Would she have lived had she not been on a vegan diet? I think that's impossible to say but this should be a cautionary tale to anyone that's following this diet plan. More so those who are involved in sports and on a vegan diet at the same time.
The woman's husband, also a vegan, were climbing Everest to be the first vegans on the summit in an attempt to prove that vegans can do anything. He narrowly escaped death and has been hospitalized.
she was on a quest to climb the world’s seven most challenging summits to prove that “vegans can do anything.”
But in a sad twist, her vegan diet may have contributed to her death on the mountain.
“Altitude sickness can affect anyone,” says Niket Sonpal, M.D., assistant clinical professor at Touro College of Medicine in New York. “It’s an equal opportunity offender. But oxygen-carrying capacity is something that vegans can be affected by.”
A vegan diet in of itself puts the person on the diet in a disadvantage nutritionally. Without additional supplements the dieter can be under the necessary amounts of B12 which allows red blood cells to carry oxygen. Sadly this woman died from altitude sickness which at it's base is a lack of oxygen. Would she have lived had she not been on a vegan diet? I think that's impossible to say but this should be a cautionary tale to anyone that's following this diet plan. More so those who are involved in sports and on a vegan diet at the same time.
The woman's husband, also a vegan, were climbing Everest to be the first vegans on the summit in an attempt to prove that vegans can do anything. He narrowly escaped death and has been hospitalized.
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Replies
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A vegan athlete that did not know she had to take certain vitamins?
She never had a doctor mention it?
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Of the 6 dead, how many were actually vegan?2
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Without knowing if she was supplementing properly or not, it seems out of place to speculate about if her diet contributed to the altitude sickness and subsequent death. She and her husband were experienced, avid mountain climbers and long time vegans. I'm sure they had taken precautions to have a safe climb.
It's a tragedy that she died, as all deaths on Everest are, and my heart goes out to her husband who will have to cope with her loss.8 -
EvgeniZyntx wrote: »Of the 6 dead, how many were actually vegan?
True but if you look at the percentage of vegans climbing that died you get 50% mortality. Nearly 100%. It was a close call for him.0 -
Dying on Everest can happen to anyone. She was apparently an avid climber who had also climbed the other 6 tallest mountains in the world. I doubt that she was ignorant as to what her body's needs were.
It's unfortunate that this is getting reported this way.9 -
The comments on that article are fascinating.1
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EvgeniZyntx wrote: »Of the 6 dead, how many were actually vegan?
Only 1. Those articles are just click bate. So sad but it had nothing to do with her diet.3 -
EvgeniZyntx wrote: »Of the 6 dead, how many were actually vegan?
^^This. So much this. Since all the coverage I have seen only refers to the one woman as being vegan, the implication is that the rest weren't. So pseudo statistics tell me that meat eaters are five times as likely to die mountain climbing as vegans. (Although to be fair, I could have sworn the stories I saw said only four people died. If that's the case, meat eaters are only three times as likely to die mountain climbing as vegans.)6 -
Without knowing if she was supplementing properly or not, it seems out of place to speculate about if her diet contributed to the altitude sickness and subsequent death. She and her husband were experienced, avid mountain climbers and long time vegans. I'm sure they had taken precautions to have a safe climb.
It's a tragedy that she died, as all deaths on Everest are, and my heart goes out to her husband who will have to cope with her loss.
How is it a tragedy when adults die in what is essentially a recreational endeavor that they should know carries a substantial risk of death? That's just the odds catching up to you.
Tragedy is when a child dies playing in her bedroom from a stray bullet fired out on the street, or a plane goes down killing hundreds because a bird got sucked into the engines, or a parent working two jobs gets hit by a car crossing an inadequately lit street after a 90-minute bus ride to get back to the kids.
I'm not saying I don't feel sympathy for her family, the way you would if a lifetime smoker died of lung cancer or a lifetime binge-drinker died of liver failure. I'm just missing what the tragic element is here.9 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »Without knowing if she was supplementing properly or not, it seems out of place to speculate about if her diet contributed to the altitude sickness and subsequent death. She and her husband were experienced, avid mountain climbers and long time vegans. I'm sure they had taken precautions to have a safe climb.
It's a tragedy that she died, as all deaths on Everest are, and my heart goes out to her husband who will have to cope with her loss.
How is it a tragedy when adults die in what is essentially a recreational endeavor that they should know carries a substantial risk of death? That's just the odds catching up to you.
Tragedy is when a child dies playing in her bedroom from a stray bullet fired out on the street, or a plane goes down killing hundreds because a bird got sucked into the engines, or a parent working two jobs gets hit by a car crossing an inadequately lit street after a 90-minute bus ride to get back to the kids.
I'm not saying I don't feel sympathy for her family, the way you would if a lifetime smoker died of lung cancer or a lifetime binge-drinker died of liver failure. I'm just missing what the tragic element is here.
I agree with you that your situations are much more tragic because of the innocence involved and the unavoidable nature of such events, but I thought about it before choosing that particular word and I'll stand by it.
It makes sense when viewed in the classical way--a character flaw that leads to the hero's downfall. In the case of mountaineers, their sense of adventure can be their undoing, and the sense of wasted life and unfulfilled dreams that they leave behind can be haunting.
But I also meant it in the sense that it's a grueling death that immediately impacts and puts team members at risk. Then usually the body is left behind to become a gruesome landmark for others who could very well be trudging along to their own deaths. Family members--who may have been dead set against an expedition-- may never have the closure of a real burial and have to carry the burden of their loved one's senseless death.
And no matter how you cut it, it's a personal tragedy for the people themselves who honestly believed, perhaps foolishly, that they had what it took and found out the hard way how wrong they were.3 -
I don't really think this is the place to bash other people's lifestyle choices. Unless you knew the woman and exactly what she ate, you cannot put it down to her vegan diet. I mean, what about all the carnivores that have died due to their diets?4
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Facts:
A lady died doing what she obviously loved doing.
She was a vegan.
It's very sad for her family.
We all die at some time.
She may or may not have died due to this lifestyle. Until it's proven 100% it's kind of irrelevant and although it's sad for her to have not completed her quest, it's not newsworthy in my opinion. She was a seasoned climber, she knew the risks, presumably took the correct precautions otherwise she would have probably died somewhere else. She died doing something she loved. We should all be so lucky.
Besides, most vegans don't attempt to climb Everest...
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So no meat eaters have died on Mt Everest? Low carbers? Paleo? If they have, does it prove those diets wrong? This article displays an astounding lack of logic that seems to be driven by a desire to play "gotcha" to discredit a diet this author apparently doesn't like or is ignorant about. There's no evidence that this woman's diet played any role in her death, nor that she had a b12 deficiency, nor that her specific intake is representative of vegans in general (the only thing vegans share in common is a lack of animal products... You have no info on what she actually did eat). There is no evidence that vegans in general are at higher risk on Mt Everest or disproportionately affected by altitude, nor that appropriately planned vegan diets in pose any unusual health risks (according to the consensus of actual dietetics professionals and peer reviewed research vs. doctors quoted out of context in a poorly written magazine article).4
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lynn_glenmont wrote: »Without knowing if she was supplementing properly or not, it seems out of place to speculate about if her diet contributed to the altitude sickness and subsequent death. She and her husband were experienced, avid mountain climbers and long time vegans. I'm sure they had taken precautions to have a safe climb.
It's a tragedy that she died, as all deaths on Everest are, and my heart goes out to her husband who will have to cope with her loss.
How is it a tragedy when adults die in what is essentially a recreational endeavor that they should know carries a substantial risk of death? That's just the odds catching up to you.
Tragedy is when a child dies playing in her bedroom from a stray bullet fired out on the street, or a plane goes down killing hundreds because a bird got sucked into the engines, or a parent working two jobs gets hit by a car crossing an inadequately lit street after a 90-minute bus ride to get back to the kids.
I'm not saying I don't feel sympathy for her family, the way you would if a lifetime smoker died of lung cancer or a lifetime binge-drinker died of liver failure. I'm just missing what the tragic element is here.
I tend to feel the same way. I feel for her family, but let's not act like this was some freak occurrence. She knew the risk.1 -
There is no evidence this woman was deficient in B12 and she had several successful difficult climbs behind her. Other vegans have successfully climbed Everest and non-vegans have died of the exact same causes on Everest.
This feels like baseless scare-mongering.1 -
EvgeniZyntx wrote: »Of the 6 dead, how many were actually vegan?
True but if you look at the percentage of vegans climbing that died you get 50% mortality. Nearly 100%. It was a close call for him.
No. At least one other vegan has a successful summit.0 -
Docbanana2002 wrote: »So no meat eaters have died on Mt Everest? Low carbers? Paleo? If they have, does it prove those diets wrong? This article displays an astounding lack of logic that seems to be driven by a desire to play "gotcha" to discredit a diet this author apparently doesn't like or is ignorant about. There's no evidence that this woman's diet played any role in her death, nor that she had a b12 deficiency, nor that her specific intake is representative of vegans in general (the only thing vegans share in common is a lack of animal products... You have no info on what she actually did eat). There is no evidence that vegans in general are at higher risk on Mt Everest or disproportionately affected by altitude, nor that appropriately planned vegan diets in pose any unusual health risks (according to the consensus of actual dietetics professionals and peer reviewed research vs. doctors quoted out of context in a poorly written magazine article).
Unfortunately it's not just this article. Her death is being reported in major news outlets and the only reason it's of interest is that she was vegan.
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Husband-wife team climb Everest to justify veganism.
Wife dies from altitude sickness; husband falls ill.
Evidence suggests (but doesn't prove) altitude sickness could be linked to vegan diet.
In a week in which Everest deaths are already newsworthy, the above seems pretty newsworthy to me.0 -
Totally unrelated, but my daughter's friend's mom just climbed Mt. Everest last week for the seventh time.5
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