Nitrogen Narcosis - from breathing air?

[DocVikingo]

I seem to remember the purpose of monitoring heart beat is that the increased heart rate increases . . . . crap, what's the word? Caviitation? The churning action that causes "seeds" in the blood stream to begin to form bubbles? When the blood passes through various restrictions and such.

Hi Jax,

The word is cavitation.

Cavitation/tribonucleation is the process of formation of voids and clouds of bubbles in liquids under tension. Minuscule bubble clouds can be formed by turbulence in fluids like blood, including the turbulence caused by rapid or powerful movements of adjoining moving bodily surfaces such as joint, other skeletal and muscle surfaces.

Given a sufficient inert gas loading (e.g., nitrogen supersaturation), these seed bubbles may serve as receptacles for the diffusion of gasses passing from the dissolved to the free gas phase as the diver surfaces. If such micronuclei grow to bubbles of critical size and number, they can set the stage for DCI.

Regards,

DocVikingo

[Doppler]

I have driven home from dive sites late on a sunday evening breathing 50/50 heliox and/or 85/15 heliox (both decompression gases I employ pretty regularly). Totally subjective, but I'd say that my head is absolutely clearer... Now an interesting test might be to see how an 18/82 argox mixture feels.

Is there a PhD thesis here waiting to happen?