Does long-term intermittent exposure to high altitude affect cardiorespiratory function, resting metabolic rate, and heart rate variability in coal miners?
Long-term high altitude exposure in miners causes significant cardiorespiratory and autonomic nervous system alterations without changing resting metabolic rate.
These results implicate that long-term intermittent exposure to high altitude can lead miners to an intensified respiration, a compromised circulation and a profound sympathetic-parasympathetic imbalance, whereas the RMR in highland miners does not distinctly decline.
Yang et al. (2022) studied this question.