Freediving while pregnant?

[Hank49]

If a pregnant woman was physically fit and and an accomplished free diver before pregnancy, and only did dives of 40-50 seconds, ascending before any strong urge to breath, ....how could this harm a fetus?

I could understand how staying down as long as the woman could stand (2 minutes or more), or even lying on a couch and holding her breath as long as she could, would cause stress and discomfort for the fetus.
I wonder if it would start moving around "clawing for the surface" after a 4 minute breath hold while watching TV?

And even if the fetus did feel stressed, having the same feeling as the mother when CO2 levels rise and tells her to surface. would this cause permanent damage?

It doesn't appear to harm baby shrimp when we drop oxygen levels to almost 0 ppm while transporting them for very short periods....less than 15 seconds. Yeah, yeah, shrimp aren't humans but living cells are living cells.
Interesting....

 

[flots am]

If a pregnant woman was physically fit and and an accomplished free diver before pregnancy, and only did dives of 40-50 seconds, ascending before any strong urge to breath, ....how could this harm a fetus?

I could understand how staying down as long as the woman could stand (2 minutes or more), or even lying on a couch and holding her breath as long as she could, would cause stress and discomfort for the fetus.
I wonder if it would start moving around "clawing for the surface" after a 4 minute breath hold while watching TV?

I'm out of here guys. With any luck you'll never get to find out if you were wrong.

flots.

 

[Hank49]

I'm out of here guys. With any luck you'll never get to find out if you were wrong.

flots.

I'm not challenging your position on this. I'm just wondering. I find it interesting.

Pregnant whales, dolphins, sea lions etc etc must continue to dive while they're pregnant. It doesn't appear to harm their young.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

I'm not challenging your position on this. I'm just wondering. I find it interesting.

Pregnant whales, dolphins, sea lions etc etc must continue to dive while they're pregnant. It doesn't appear to harm their young.

Good answer.... But then again. Maybe the child will never learn to read or play the piano.. never saw a whale do that have you now.. Mr. Smartypants...

 

[KellyAsh]

My concern would be that developing dead air spaces and other pressure affected tissues could be compromised under the additional pressures thereby leading to deformities and god knows what other complications should conditions be "just right" for such issues to arise.

Just because many women have had healthy babies after 9 months of hardcore freediving doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't just as many women out there with deformed or dead children due to frediving.

Good discussion guys. Thanks for your input.

 

[DocVikingo]

Hi Hank49,

Sadly, science, logic and orderly discourse deserted this thread several posts back.

If you want to participate, you'll need to pontificate ; )

Regards,

DocV

 

[Hank49]

Good answer.... But then again. Maybe the child will never learn to read or play the piano.. never saw a whale do that have you now.. Mr. Smartypants...

Well, no.....but Shamu's (the orca) mother probably did some serious free dives while pregnant with him and he can do some pretty cool stuff.

---------- Post added May 3rd, 2012 at 09:39 AM ----------

Good answer.... But then again. Maybe the child will never learn to read or play the piano.. never saw a whale do that have you now.. Mr. Smartypants...

But maybe you're onto something.....let's keep a sea lion in a shallow puddle of seawater for the whole gestation period and see it the baby CAN learn piano...What a great research project. Perhaps drums would be a more practical instrument though...certainly not electric guitar....being wet and all...

Yeah....because it makes perfect sense that diving would be selective in the brain cell damage. It won't hurt survival skills like thinking how to capture prey....but the artistic skills would suffer. But seriously....can we get a piano designed with wide keys for the sea lion's flippers?

 

[Duke Dive Medicine]

Busy call week here so just now getting to this. Some science for DocV and others interested:

The below paper covers obstructive sleep apnea in pregnancy, which has been proven to cause adverse fetal outcomes. Of course most free divers do not perform repeated apnea dives for eight hours at a time on a daily basis, but it's worth the read.
Obstructive sleep apnea and pregnancy: the effec... [J Perinatol. 2012] - PubMed - NCBI

The below abstract summarizes some data that's been collected from elite free divers. There's a small "n" because there aren't that many elite free divers, but it does provide some useful data. Not sure if the full text of the article will be available to all (happy to email the PDF by individual request), but one data point is that during the struggle phase of voluntary dry apnea (a phase which most apnea divers, and all elite apnea divers, go through), hemoglobin oxygen saturation drops to an average of 81% (normal is 95% or above).

Involuntary breathing movements improve cereb... [J Appl Physiol. 2009] - PubMed - NCBI

It's worthwhile to consider that every infant born goes through periods of hypoxia during birth due to compression of the umbilical cord during uterine contractions; however, the fetus is fully developed at this point and so is better equipped to tolerate this.

So there's some of the rationale behind the "why risk it?" opinion. For Hank: yes, diving marine mammals give birth to normal young all the time. I've even seen sea lions play songs using bicycle horns, so maybe their musical skills really are preserved You're also smart enough to know that these creatures have evolved for this over millions of years so it's not really worthwhile to compare them to a land-dwelling human.

Of course there's a continuum here. Will it harm a developing fetus if a mother-to-be does a 30-second snorkel down to 20 feet? Probably not. But, what if the mom did this all day, every day? The Ama diver paper that DocV linked has some obvious shortcomings that have already been pointed out, and the OSA and pregnancy paper linked above has some interesting parallels.

 

[Hank49]

According the the sleep apnea paper, people who suffer from OSA also have a link to hypertension and or obesity. It's not really an "apple to apple" comparison to a healthy, leisurely free diving pregnant woman.

I've read that jogging may actually benefit the brain of a fetus. Doesn't jogging also create a hypoxic state, comparable to non intensive free diving? (other than the increase in partial pressure of gases in the lungs while submerged)

 

[Duke Dive Medicine]

Hi Hank,

The OSA paper does mention obesity and hypertension as being associated with obstructive sleep apnea, but also suggests that OSA itself may be associated with poor fetal outcomes. It does mention the lack of adequetely powered studies.

Re jogging: no, it doesn't create a hypoxic state. Exercising to the point of VO2 max (maximum oxygen consumption) would be the closest approximation, and that's not advised during pregnancy in any event.

Best regards,
DDM