
Booze could threaten a sleeping air passenger’s heart health, particularly on long-haul flights, a new study warns. Alcohol combined with cabin pressure at cruising altitude lowers the amount of oxygen in the blood and raises the heart rate for a long period, even in the young and healthy, researchers explained. And the more alcohol a person drinks, the greater these effects might be – especially among older passengers or those with chronic health problems, results show. Blood oxygen levels can decline to around 90% in healthy passengers at cruising altitude, researchers said in background notes. Anything lower than that is considered hypobaric hypoxia, or low blood oxygen levels at high altitude. Alcohol relaxes blood vessel walls and increases heart rate during sleep, causing an effect similar to hypobaric hypoxia, researchers said. That made them suspect the combination could do harm to sleeping air passengers. For their experiment, researchers recruited 48 people ages 18 to 40. They assigned half to a sleep lab under normal air pressure and half to an altitude chamber that mimicked cabin pressure at cruising altitude. Among those, half were asked to drink an amount of vodka that roughly equaled two cans of beer or two glasses of wine. The combination of alcohol and cabin pressure caused a fall in blood oxygen levels to just over 85%, and a compensatory increase in… read on > read on >