With all due respect to your wife, she is just wrong. I will look around some for the study I found a long time ago, it was a pretty unknown population in south America I believe. But a quick search and my first hit was this study, which found 54.1% in Andeans. It did say that different high altitude populations differ in their adaptations. And that is an average, so for every guy that is 45%, there is someone 60%..
It probably is here on ST somewhere, as I do recall posting it, but screw me and the search function here. But it was about 60% average for the men.. And my friend does not dope, like I said, he was probably dehydrated. But having known him since the early 90's, he has been consistent in the low 50's all that time. And like I said, I have several old tests in the 49's for myself, so have to believe there are a lot more out there around the bubble.
It did explain a lot once if figured it out. Whenever I went to altitude, I would thrive after about the 5th day, while most my training buddies were dead beat. Did a sea level to almost 12k hike once with a much younger girlfriend who said she did well in the mountains, and had to carry her down the mountain that night with severe altitude sickness. Even Dan who has always said he is great up high, went with me on a high trip once, he became severely sick on day 2, while I went on to have one of the best weeks of my life training up high..I was born to be a mountain man, probably why I suck so bad in the Kona heat...
"The data of these studies show a mean hematocrit of 50% in Himalayans and 54.1% in Andeans."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...articles/PMC3049524/
It probably is here on ST somewhere, as I do recall posting it, but screw me and the search function here. But it was about 60% average for the men.. And my friend does not dope, like I said, he was probably dehydrated. But having known him since the early 90's, he has been consistent in the low 50's all that time. And like I said, I have several old tests in the 49's for myself, so have to believe there are a lot more out there around the bubble.
It did explain a lot once if figured it out. Whenever I went to altitude, I would thrive after about the 5th day, while most my training buddies were dead beat. Did a sea level to almost 12k hike once with a much younger girlfriend who said she did well in the mountains, and had to carry her down the mountain that night with severe altitude sickness. Even Dan who has always said he is great up high, went with me on a high trip once, he became severely sick on day 2, while I went on to have one of the best weeks of my life training up high..I was born to be a mountain man, probably why I suck so bad in the Kona heat...
"The data of these studies show a mean hematocrit of 50% in Himalayans and 54.1% in Andeans."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...articles/PMC3049524/