Holding Breath When Diving

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jw2013

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When diving, I've read it's good to control your depth by breathing - for example, if I am swimming a wreck and want to lift a meter to drop into a doorway or window, I can breath in and I'll rise, drop in and continue.


I then read this is a *dangerous practice at any depth* due to the physics of air expansion and potential lung damage?


Can anyone offer advice here please?


Thank you!
 
I'm no expert, so take this with a grain of salt. I've been reading on buoyancy control by breathing, and getting longer dive times/getting the most of your tank by controlled breathing. I've learned that you can take in a breath and hold it to ascend a foot or two, or to get the most out of every breath of air by holding it in for a second or two. The trick is that you breathe in and always keep your esophagus/airway open. Don't close of the back of your throat! So if the air expands it's free to exit your lungs. Hope this makes sense. :)
 
You gotta breath sometime---which includes inhaling & exhaling.........Just go thru shorter doorways & windows??--maybe??.....:)
 
You don't really need to hold your breath to achieve this.

If you are neutral while breathing normally, then you should be pretty close to neutral when your lungs are half full. So, if you breathe in deeply and then exhale about half of that followed by inhaling again, you should rise up a bit. Conversely, if you exhale completely and then take a half breath and exhale again, you should descend.

Another option, is to continue breathing normally and just swim up, and then swim back down.

It is true that you can have a lung over-expansion injury at any depth, it is more of an issue at shallower depths where the pressure gradient is more pronounced. By this I mean, going from 33'(10m) to the surface, gas will double in volume. Going from 66'(20m) to 33'(10m), gas will only expand 1.5 times.
 
What you're describing seems more a matter of how deeply to breath and exhale, rather than holding your breath, which is a different thing. I control my buoyancy within a couple feet by breath control all the time but I keep breathing. We're not talking 3 or 4 meters, it's generally less than 1 and it's still continuous breathing, not holding it for 30 seconds at a time. It's the depth and rate of breathing (slower exhale, for example) rather than holding the breath.
 
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When diving, I've read it's good to control your depth by breathing - for example, if I am swimming a wreck and want to lift a meter to drop into a doorway or window, I can breath in and I'll rise, drop in and continue.

I then read this is a *dangerous practice at any depth* due to the physics of air expansion and potential lung damage?

This is a case of an easy-to-remember general rule that works well for everybody, without getting too specific.

The deal is that if you block off air flow from your lungs and then ascend, you can damage your lungs and possibly kill yourself.

"Breath holding" is quite different than breathing more/less/deeper/shallowed/not breathing. As long as air can exit from your lungs, out your mouth or nose, you'll be fine. If you block off the flow of air with your glottis/epiglottis or other structures and ascend, then you have trouble.

This is much more complicated than what most open water divers can reliably retain long-term after a class, so it's become the general rule of "never hold your breath", which always works and is easy to remember.

flots.
 
New divers are taught, "Never hold your breath," because breath-holding with a closed airway is a very likely way to create severe injury or death.

It is, however, possible to hold a large volume in your lungs WITHOUT a closed airway. As you sit and read this, take a deep breath and hold it and relax. You feel as though your throat is a "stopper", which is preventing the air from escaping. Now take a deep breath and, while your lungs are full, make small panting efforts. Feel how your throat is open? You can hold it open without the panting efforts, too. This creates an open airway, which will allow the expansion of gas so that pressure in the chest does not increase as you move upward a little -- and this type of breathing is only used for small buoyancy changes, because honestly, it's too uncomfortable to hold one's breath for long enough to go up very much.

This distinction is not made to new divers, because they are generally so distracted and so task-loaded that the fine distinction between an open and a closed airway would easily be lost, and the danger is extremely real.
 
New divers are taught, "Never hold your breath," because breath-holding with a closed airway is a very likely way to create severe injury or death.

It is, however, possible to hold a large volume in your lungs WITHOUT a closed airway. As you sit and read this, take a deep breath and hold it and relax. You feel as though your throat is a "stopper", which is preventing the air from escaping. Now take a deep breath and, while your lungs are full, make small panting efforts. Feel how your throat is open? You can hold it open without the panting efforts, too. This creates an open airway, which will allow the expansion of gas so that pressure in the chest does not increase as you move upward a little -- and this type of breathing is only used for small buoyancy changes, because honestly, it's too uncomfortable to hold one's breath for long enough to go up very much.

This distinction is not made to new divers, because they are generally so distracted and so task-loaded that the fine distinction between an open and a closed airway would easily be lost, and the danger is extremely real.

This is almost verbatim, what I was taught in my first scuba course. NAUI circa 1975 as a Phys. Ed. class at Pitt.
 
I've certainly heard "don't hold your breath" often enough and it's good, but basic, advice. What I was taught was that you should always be either inhaling or exhaling. If you're not positive you understand when your airway is open while not exhaling you can always exhale very slowly.

If you inhale and then exhale you will start ascending when your lungs are full enough to make you buoyant and you'll stop ascending when you've exhaled enough to not be buoyant. Imagine you're perfectly neutral halfway through an inhalation or exhalation. You can pace your inhaling and exhaling to spend more time with enough air to be buoyant or to be negative, and of course you can balance inhaling and exhaling to be, on average, neutral.

It's a bit like learning to ride a bike. Going straight, like being neutral, is really a lot of minor wobbling from side to side. Turning, like being buoyant and ascending or negative and descending, requires deliberately leaning towards one side or the other but you don't lean very far for long.
 
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