Monday, May 21, 2007

Studying Sherpas

(Note: Nu Skin Enterprises sent out a reminder today about the scientific research being done on the all-Sherpa team that recently reached the summit of Mount Everest - below is a summary of their press release.)

A five-pound piece of equipment among the hundreds of pounds of gear used by the SuperSherpas Expedition may soon give the scientific world a glimpse into why a small group of climbers from Nepal can handle physical stress at high altitudes so much better than experienced mountaineers from all over the world.

The so-called Pharmanex Biophotonic Scanner was used during the SuperSherpas recent successful summit of Mount Everest. The intent was to study cellular damage from "oxidative stress" experienced during high-altitude climbing by members of the all-Sherpa team, including two Sherpas who now live in Utah.

On May 16 at around 9 a.m. in Nepal, a SuperSherpas summit team, led by Utahns Apa Sherpa and Lhakpa Sherpa, reached the summit of Everest. Along the way, a team of Utah researchers used the scanner as a non-invasive means of measuring antioxidant levels in the Sherpas.

"By using the scanner on their expedition, the SuperSherpas team members and researchers may gain a greater understanding of how antioxidants work and what role they play in the unique physiology of Sherpas versus other high-altitude climbers," said Dr. Joe Chang, chief scientific officer of Nu Skin Enterprises.

The scanner is described as a "cutting-edge testing tool that safely and non-invasively measures carotenoid levels in living tissue, providing an indication correlated with a person's overall antioxidant levels. Antioxidants help neutralize damage from free radicals within living tissue," according to the Nu Skin release.

For more information about the scanner, visit the Web site, www.pharmanex.com.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

what were the results of the scanner? What did it find?

July 19, 2007 at 1:01 AM  

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