DevonDiver
N/A
And is that because the don't want to be bent or because of some mysterious unproven benefit of less fatigue?
What's bent? Is it black and white? Bent or not bent? Or is it grey? Shades of bent?
Do you believe we perfectly fine until some magical DCS line is crossed.... then we're injured?
Like crossing a road? We're either hit by a car or not.... either arrive at the other side in perfect health and well-being or get carted off in an ambulance severely injured or dead? No... it doesn't work that way. And doing an 'emu'; sticking your head in the sand overthe matter of sub-clinical DCS isn't a sound strategy.
I strongly believe that more information will arise in the future that shows harmful long-term consequences to decompression stress... sub-clinical DCS. It is also a 'yard-stick' for the effectiveness of your off-gassing... your comfort zone from DCS. And lastly, who the heck wants to be a washed-out zombie after diving??? I've got a life to lead thanks... catching zzzzz's all evening on the couch every night doesn't seem my idea of a great life (or great holiday, for those who don't work in diving...)
The concept of sub-clinical DCS is well understood and written about.
The medical definition of sub-clinical: "...relating to or denoting a disease which is not severe enough to present definite or readily observable symptoms".
Regards "unproven"... whilst no specific study had been done on nitrox/decompression stress/fatigue; we can extrapolate proven facts from other studies.
1. FACT: Ascent speed and stops influence microbubble scores.
2. FACT: Microbubble growth/elimination is heavily influenced by gas gradients.
3. FACT: Increasing %O2 increases gas gradient of nitrogen between tissues, lungs and ambient.
4. FACT: Increasing ppO2 and reducing ppN accelerates decompression.
5. FACT: Every diver contains inert gas bubbles on ascent, only the frequency/number and size vary.
6. FACT: Bubble size, not frequency/number determines DCS diagnosis.
7. FACT: Limiting bubble size, not frequency/number is the basis of most non-bubble deco algorithms.
8. FACT: The human body reacts to bubbles through an immune-system response.
9. FACT: Greater frequency of bubbles, of whatever size, creates a wider immune-system response.
10. FACT: Immune-system response alters blood/brain chemistry.
11. FACT: Blood/brain chemistry responses originating from immune-system activation result in..... FATIGUE!
More information here: Sub-Clinical DCS, Decompression Stress and Micro-Bubbles
Want quotes?
"... "mild DCI" is harder to define. This is largely because bubbles form, and can be detected in the venous blood, following a significant proportion of dives that do not result in symptoms that would normally be labelled "DCI". It is therefore hardly surprising that there can be a poorly defined boundary between wellness and mild DCI following diving. [...] It is not infrequent for divers to report highly non-specific and vague symptoms of variable latency, such as mild evanescent aches and pains, fatigue, demotivation and headache".
MANAGEMENT OF MILD OR MARGINAL DECOMPRESSION ILLNESS IN REMOTE LOCATIONS: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM.
S.J.Mitchell Ph.D, D. J. Doolette, Ph.D. DAN Remote Workshop Proceedings
MANAGEMENT OF MILD OR MARGINAL DECOMPRESSION ILLNESS IN REMOTE LOCATIONS: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM.
S.J.Mitchell Ph.D, D. J. Doolette, Ph.D. DAN Remote Workshop Proceedings
"Inappropriate fatigue is a clear-cut symptom of subclinical decompression illness. I’m not a technical diver, Lord knows; but I see a lot of these guys. I send them out with decompression tables and they tell me what happens. They use their fatigue, their feeling of well-being – we called it constitution yesterday – as a major item in judging whether their decompression was adequate. The fact that they don’t have any joint pain or tingling or rash or anything is secondary. Their major thermometer as to whether they’ve been properly decompressed is how well they feel. And that has to do with the fatigue and inappropriate fatigue. So we have to keep this as a symptom, not as a side issue".
MANAGEMENT OF MILD OR MARGINAL DECOMPRESSION ILLNESS IN REMOTE LOCATIONS: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM.
Bill Hamilton in discussion. DAN Remote Workshop Proceedings
"Doppler monitoring has revealed the presence of gas phase bubbles in divers ascending even from relatively shallow dives. We have also all experienced symptoms such as headache and fatigue in the immediate post-dive phase which we have put down to overexertion on exiting the water etc. In more recent years, we have been told that these symptoms are those of subclinical DCI and we have lived with these, perhaps naively, thinking that because they are not associated with overt symptoms of DCI, they are not causing any damage and are nothing to worry about. However, enter the iceberg principle. Nine tenths of the damage may be invisible and cumulative".
THE TROUBLE WITH BUBBLES.
Richard Heads PhD. 9-90 Magazine: UK Diving in Depth
THE TROUBLE WITH BUBBLES.
Richard Heads PhD. 9-90 Magazine: UK Diving in Depth
"...we know that bubbles are probably present after most dives, so we don’t have to exceed an M-value to produce bubbles in the absence of DCS. [...] Although an M-value may not have been exceeded, symptoms of decompression stress such as fatigue, malaise, drowsiness etc. could well be the result".
LOL... this is in 'basic scuba', but it effects us all... especially those who haven't (yet) refined their diving behavior.
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