Why does it get harder to breathe in high elevation?

Answer 1

At high altitude, there is less oxygen, so breathing rate is increased to compensate.

Answer 2

Simply put, the higher you go the less air is above you. This is why air pressure is so much lower at higher altitudes. There is less oxygen because gases compress under pressure. That is why it's harder to breathe.

This should not discourage most healthy people from traveling to higher altitudes. Your body will make adjustments over a few days to accomodate to it, such as producing more red blood cells.

It's not that it is harder to breathe exactly, but breathing at high elevation does not provide as much benefit as it does at sea level. This is because the atmosphere is more dense at low altitudes, and at high altitudes the atmosphere is not as dense. In other words, if you have a container of air at sea level, that container would hold more molecules than the same container would have at higher elevation.

When you breathe, what your body is taking out of the air is oxygen (which makes up about 20% of the Earth's atmosphere). As you go to higher elevation, the same breath that you take doesn't have as much oxygen in it because the air is less dense. Therefore, doing physical activities at high altitude, where your body demands a lot of oxygen to function can be very difficult because you need more breaths to get the same amount of oxygen as you would at sea level.

Less oxygen in the air at higher altitudes and because atmospheric pressure is lower, the air molecules and hence the O2 is less concentrated per unit volume.

When you are higher up the air gets thinner, this means that you are not taking in as much oxygen as normal resulting in difficulty of breathing.

See the Related Questions for more information about air pressure at different altitudes.

Answer 3

It gets harder to breathe the higher up you get from sea level because the amount of oxygen in the air decreases, making you work harder to get the oxygen required to do aerobic respiration.

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WRONG !!

there's the SAME amount of oxygen,

there's just LESS ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE at higher elevations than at sea level.

"air" actually has "weight"

so not only is there less gravity, the higher the elevation,

but also there's the pressure of the air above it, pushing it down

(increasing pressure at sea lvl)

Answer 4

As one ascends in altitude the density (amount of gasses in a unit volume) of the air decreases. Thus at altitude a breath-full of air contains less oxygen than a breath-full of air taken at sea level.

Taken to extreme as one ascends in altitude, the air gets thinner and thinner until one is in the vacuum of space.

Answer 5

At higher elevations, the air pressure is lower, which means there is less oxygen available per breath. This can make it harder for your body to take in enough oxygen to meet its needs, leading to shortness of breath and fatigue. Additionally, your body may need time to acclimate to the lower oxygen levels at high altitudes.

Answer 6

The air gets thinner as you increase altitude, the same reason why only certain planes can reach high altitudes.

Answer 7

There are fewer gas molecules per unit of volume as you go higher, so less oxygen.

Answer 8

air is heavier than the other gases in the atmosphere, therefore there is less the higher up you go

Answer 9

Because you're are closer to the sun the higher you go