Feeling Nausea After Dives

Hi there,

I'm quite a new diver & I'm always feeling nausea (sometimes I would have headaches too) after I've surfaced from a dive. I would need to rest on land for at least an hour before I feel well enough to go for another dive.

I'm just wondering if I'm just too tired, or maybe the pills is not working out for me or maybe I'm suffering from too much CO2?

FYI: I'll always take some ginger pills to help curb my motion-sickness when I go for my dive trips.

Thanks in advance for any replies!

It COULD be CO2 retention - are you skip breathing ot breath holding even without noticing ?

Make sure regulator isnt detuned too much - i had a headache after sucking air through mine until i realised id knocked the slider to fully negative.

If it happens a lot id venture it isnt contaminated air.

Have you tried diving without taking the ginger before? Maybe it is a contributing factor. WHo knows? I hope you can get this figure out. Good luck.

I've tried the ginger pills, didn't work too well. I switched over to Meclizine, brand name Bonine or Dramamine 2. They are available OTC without prescription, and they work wonders to stop me from getting seasick.

I used to get headaches occasionally after diving, that went away after I started using Nitrox. However, during my recent trip to Cozumel, I dove on air the entire time and felt prefectly fine. Who knows.

Mel
PADI Rescue Diver/Nitrox

Another thing that causes headaches is coming up too fast (can vary from person to person)...try it a bit slower.
I had tried every pill in the book, buddies suggestions (one pill the day before, one pill in the morning), pressure bands, eating before I go, not eating before I go, staying away from citrus juices and caffine...and STILL got sick (even passed out once). In the end we figured out I had too much meds and not enough to eat. Change your routine everty time until you find what works for you.

ok... i get sick as heck when i go diving (usually) in anything over 2-3 feet waves.

what i do is i take dramamine the night before and the morning of, and if it's an
afternoon dive, about an hour before the dive.

if you are getting a headache, it might also be CO2 retention. make sure you take
long, deep breaths, breathe the whole time, don't try to save air by breathing unnaturally. see if that helps the headaches.

melfox26:

I've tried the ginger pills, didn't work too well. I switched over to Meclizine, brand name Bonine or Dramamine 2. They are available OTC without prescription, and they work wonders to stop me from getting seasick.

I used to get headaches occasionally after diving, that went away after I started using Nitrox. However, during my recent trip to Cozumel, I dove on air the entire time and felt prefectly fine. Who knows.

Mel
PADI Rescue Diver/Nitrox

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Mel,

Let me guess: you used to get headaches when you were relatively new to diving? Then when you had gained experience, you took a nitrox-cert and the headaches disappeared? My guess is, that it has nothing to do with Nitrox, and here is why....

It's not that uncommon among new divers to be tense. Holding a regulator between your teeth is unnatural for most people. Doing so under water where dropping it means that breathing becomes oh so much harder is even more unnatural. For that reason, I see a tendancy among some beginning divers to "bite unnaturally" and tense their jaw-muscles and other facial/neck muscles, trying to hold it in place. Not really biting, but "blocking the jaw without biting", rather than just relaxing, knowing that the reg will stay in place and that if not, they can easilly recover it. Anyways, the point to this is that I notice that these are the same divers who almost always complain over headaches when back on the boat. Once they learn to relax and "be zen", they reg just sits naturally in a relaxed mouth, and the headaches are gone. This might have been what has happened to you?

I am sure that one of the M.D. or DSS's on this board has a much more accurate explanation of the physiology of this than I, but the above is just what I've observed.

I know from myself that when I get tired, I often end up tensing my jaw-muscles and shortly thereafter get a splitting headache. This can happen when just sitting in my sofa watching telly. If I catch it in time, I can relax and avoid the headache. If not, then only a painkiller and sleep will fix me.

As for nausea or sea-sickness, I do not know anything about this. Nausea after surfacing from a dive can't be a good sign, though, so I would refer any such things to a medical professional.

A little over a month ago, I was in the Bahamas. I was doing three dives per day. By day four, I started to notice a headache and slight nausea after the dive. Nothing was wrong before the dive, just right when I got out of the water.

I was lucky that the doctor of the resort (who is also an avid diver) was on board. I was chalking it up to being seasick, but a friend got the doctor to come talk to me.

She concluded that I was dehydrated. I took the rest of that day off, and drank tons of fluids. The next day everything was fine. Over the next few days, I never had the headache or nausea.

Might be something worth looking into.

DBailey - you took the text right offa my fingers! Dehydration is a widely over looked post dive syndrome having heard about the other stuff that can occur. Since dive number 6 or 7 I have started making sure that I always am well hydrated before and after a dive. My mild headaches have stopped and the only dizzyness I've experienced was in low viz rolling conditions where its hard to keep your bearings on much more than the rising bubbles.

For what it is worth. . .

When I first started I had a lot of problems with Nausea. I was usually fine on the dive, but I often felt real queasy as soon as I surfaced. I was usually good to go on the second dive once I was underwater, but it hit like a train when I surfaced after the second dive. It was to the point where I held off buying my own gear for about 8 months until I was absolutely sure that I really wanted to commit to diving in a major way.

I was given the same recommendations as everyone else. Of course some of the recommendations were directly conflicting. I tried ginger tablets because my brother swears by them for his travel sickness (non-diver). The ginger did not help at all.

Then I tried Bonine. Silly me, I followed the directions on the package. I was told by people at several shops that the trick is to start about a day ahead of time with the Bonine and to take one the morning of the dive. I tried that and it really helped a lot. Bonine seems to be best as a preventative, not as something to take after you already feel poorly (IMHO)

Occasionally I still feel a little bit ill, but time, experience and relaxation has eased a lot of the nervousness that was probably a major contributor. I suspect that anxiety played a major role in the stomach problems, but I am not a doctor or a moderator, so I am just giving my opinion.

Also I keep a supply of individually packed saltine crackers with me. I have used them and shared them on several dive charters.

I will make sure that I really watch the hydration in the future, as I try to be more hydrated at everything these days.

Just some random thoughts, hope they help.


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