psychosomatic and decompression

[blacknet]

Hello,

Now this is an interesting question to present

Has there been ANY research into psychosomatic and hyperbarics in any form? It would seem that it would affect the persons deco in some serious ways.

Ed

 

[Dr Deco]

Dear Ed:

I am not certain as to what you are leading up to with this. Certainly there are people who develop different medical problems by “worrying themselves sick.” Certainly there are hypochondriacs who over medicate themselves for no reason.

I imagine that you are referring to the possibility that one can modify the outcome of a dive with respect to decompression sickness. To my knowledge, there is no evidence of that one way or another. With regard to this, I am thinking of individuals who can reduce their heart rate and lower their blood pressure through meditation and/or relaxation techniques.

With regard to the “power of suggestion,” this is entirely a different matter. There is no doubt that, if an individual believes that there is a problem or if they have gas bubbles from a limb, a DCS problem can develop there. We are always careful to not suggest to our NASA test subjects that they have many gas bubbles and that we are concerned. I have seen people immediately get a pain if they thought that we were paying a great degree of attention to a limb with bubbles. We see to it that this concept is not transmitted to the subject. It does not appear that simply knowing about bubbles will always be a problem, simply the great concern. All of the subjects can actually view the bubble monitor screen and they know what is happening if they want to look.

If this reply did not answer your question or does not seem to be on the right track, please rephrase and ask again.

Dr Deco

 

[blacknet]

Hello,

Oh yes you hit it correctly with the "power of suggestion" section I was getting at how big an impact does out psychological 'state of mind' (or whatever they call it) affects our deco schedules. I.e. if we think we are NOT going to get bent will we have less risk and if we thing we ARE going to get bent will we get bent?

What brought this up is I posted in another topic and it made me think about this one.

Ed

 

[Dr Deco]

Dear Ed:

With respect to all of this, it is why scientists perform double blind experiments when possible. There are indeed subtle suggestions and clues given that can influence an individual's outcome. It is not clear how or why this occurs, but it does.

Two thousand years ago, the Roman writer Cicero wrote, “belief in the treatment is a part of the cure.”

Dr Deco

 

[danreind]

I have been wondering a bit about psychosomatic effects lately myself. More and more I see technical divers talking about using the degree of post-dive fatigue to tinker with their decompression schedules. Some have mentioned that upon introduction of deep stops this fatigue was significantly lessened, although some are also now saying that this approach can be taken too far. The assumption ofcourse is that post-dive fatigue is an accurate and reliable means of assessing low-risk decompression stress. Certainly the post-dive fatigue report is so common that there is probably something to it, but how much can it be quantified and influenced?

I wonder though to what extent we can fool ourselves in this regard. Some divers swear air dives are exhausting but nitrox is energizing, others can't tell the difference - placebo or real effect? Perhaps the knowledge of the decompression profile affects our expectations and interpretations of our normal aches and pains. i.e. "I'm just tired from the hard dive, it shouldn't be deco stress because I was diving an 'X' profile". To what extent will divers take their expectations and run with them?

Regards,

Dan Reinders

 

[Liquid]

This sure seems to be a great discussion. I'm looking forward to more posts on this subject, and the main reason I post this message is to be notified on new messages here

Anyway- I want also to mention, that I know a few people that claim that DCS is all in the mind, and can be controlled through the mind. As I am a person that dosen't like this kind of aproach towards things, and I alwais say that physics are above us all and we can't get away with it, it's also hard for me to accept the "suggestion" theory mentioned earlier, but if it works, than it must be true. Anyway- one of the guys that belives it's "all in the head" almost died a few years ago of DCS. Gives you some perspetive, dosent it?

 

[Dr Deco]

Dear Liquid:

All this is true and falls to some degree under the category of the Placebo Effect. There is no question that the effect is very real; some drugs are not a lot better than the sugar pill. It is for this reason tht Double Blind experiments are performed.

It is really quite a fascinating question. I seriously doubt that all is in ones head, since animals respond to many events, and they have little idea of what is occurring.

Dr Deco

 

[Liquid]

As long as goats can have DCS it's not completly in the head i guess...

 

[blacknet]

Hello,

Ever hear of "dci denial"?

Ed