Industry Stresses Fitness for Out of Shape SCUBA Divers

Officials from the Divers Alert Network (DAN) are encouraging divers to get prepared for next week’s “mini-Lobster” season in Florida. The two-day lobster sport diving season is July 29 and 30.
"Divers get excited and rush to dive without preparation, and most of them are out of shape," said Petar Denoble, a physician who is the senior research director for the Divers Alert Network, a non-profit scuba diver safety organization. "They underestimate the level of exercise required for diving, particularly lobster diving."

This year, it is estimated that 30,000 divers will go out for lobster during mini-season. A large percentage of those will visit and dive in the Florida Keys. In the past four years, 14 divers have died in Florida during “mini-season”, 10 of those in the Florida Keys.

In comparison, only six divers died while hunting lobster statewide in the regular eight-month lobster season in the same 2005-08 period.

This year's lobster sport-diving season arrives July 29 and 30...[Link]

Scuba Diving Releases Stress: Sulaiman

Scuba diving could be the best therapy to overcome depression which is on the rise in the country, said Deputy Minister of Tourism, Datuk Sulaiman Abdul Rahman Taib.

He said the country's seas and shores with its varied flora and fauna could reduce and even overcome a diver's stress.

Sulaiman said among divers' havens were the very popular islands of Sipadan , Perhentian, Layang-layang, Payar and Tioman.

"We have many attractive destinations for scuba diving therefore make good use of God's gift to overcome stress.

"Furthermore the water temperatures here are not seasonal so one could swim, dive or participate in other water sports all year round," he told reporters after officiating the Malaysia International Dive Expo 2009 here, Friday...[Link]

Fitness afloat: 6 ways scuba makes you fit

Floating may not sound like much of a fitness activity. But scuba diving cranks up the calorie burn, requires cardiovascular strength, upper body brawn, demands the power of a good leg-kick, challenges your core muscles, and envelopes you in deep relaxation all at once.

Yes, fitness takes many forms. And one of my favorites is scuba, as you can see in this short 9 second clip my husband - and dive buddy - took hours ago.

All else aside - including the exhilaration of swimming with sea turtles - of which one admittedly never tires - here are some fitness afloat bits and insights:

1) Calorie burn: depending on which resource you use, I'm burning off about 600 calories per hour during scuba. This is not so much due to athletic activity as to the thermogenesis generated keeping core temperature stabilized.

Even at 80 degrees - which is the temperature of the water here in mid May according to our dive computers - that means the body needs to ramp up metabolic activity to keep things as close to 98.6 as possible.

Additional calorie expenditure happens kicking through currents, in and out from shore, and schlepping dive gear around. The tanks can weight from 30 to 50 lbs. Once underwater, they feel like nothing, but somebody has to get them there. And as our diving here is walk-in style, guess what that means?

And EPOC generated by thermogenesis and the other activities here help offset airport food blunders and other holiday travel indulgences...[Examiner.com]

Paralyzed at 12, Transverse myelitis turned Cody Unser's world upside down

Transverse myelitis turned Cody Unser's world upside down. Paralyzed at 12, she found she had been diagnosed with an illness her doctors didn't know much about.

"The doctors had no idea what to do," said Cody, now 22.

As Cody learned more about her condition, she found that few people knew it existed. So she created the Cody Unser First Step Foundation to help spread the word about TM.

"It sprang from my wanting to create awareness and put a face out there for it," she said.

Cody and her mother, Shelley, run the Albuquerque, N. M.-based non-profit organization by themselves. Their mission still includes efforts to raise awareness TM, but it has expanded to include support for people and families dealing with the disease.

"It's devastating to people," Shelley said. "We try and show people how to stay positive and hopeful and how to get back into society."

Cody also launched a quality-of-life program to help people with all forms of spinal cord-related paralysis, using the foundation to share her love of scuba diving...[RedlandsDailyFacts]

Five Ways to Improve Situational Awareness in Scuba Diving

I've been asked many times by people, how can they learn or improve their situational awareness. The answer to this is simple, go dive more! The more time we spend in the water the more comfortable we get. When we are comfortable, our brains will slow down and will be able to process sensations coming to the brain for our other senses. This article will list five things that people can do to improve or learn situational awareness for their scuba diving.

1. Listen to your body - When we go scuba diving, we have to equalize the dead air spaces in our body. If you are swimming along and you suddenly feel a squeeze in your ears, then it should be obvious that you are descending. You can correct this by inhaling deeply to slow down your descent or add a puff or two of gas to your BCD. This is particularly important when doing safety or decompression stops. But the point is, there are tell-tell signs of change that will come from our bodies...[PrecisionDiving.net]

Chronic dysfunction of the eustachian tube

Presenting complaints include hearing loss, persistent pain, or “clicking” in the ear. Patients must allow time for treatment (if required) to take effect.

Health-care providers working in primary care, allergy, pediatrics, and otolaryngology frequently encounter both acute and chronic eustachian-tube dysfunction (ETD). This common condition can be challenging to treat, particularly in patients with a lifelong history of ETD. A properly functioning eustachian tube allows gas diffusion which equalizes middle-ear pressure with that of the environment. An improperly functioning eustachian tube can result in negative middle-ear pressure. Left untreated, this condition may lead to complaints of hearing loss, tinnitus, otalgia, vertigo (and subsequent tympanic membrane atelectasis), fulminate cholesteatoma formation, and otitis media...[ClinicalAdvisor]

The Use of Trimix in Deep Sea Diving

People who are inexperienced with scuba diving tend to assume that such divers carry oxygen in the cylinder on their back to breathe it through a regulator when diving underwater. Nothing can be further from the truth as scuba divers never use pure oxygen

The reason for not using oxygen is that under the increasing pressure as you dive deeper, oxygen gives rise to "oxygen toxicity" that harms the cell lining of the lungs and the central nervous system.

In fact, what the recreational divers use is ordinary air that is a mixture of 79% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. But under the pressure of water at increased depth, the high level of nitrogen in air creates another problem which is called decompression sickness or "bends" in divers' terminology. Further, elevated nitrogen levels can cause nitrogen narcosis.

The deep sea divers who dive to much greater depths than the recreational scuba divers use a gas mixture called Nitrox that contains 32% or 36% of oxygen, the rest (68% or 64%) being nitrogen. The lower content of nitrogen reduces the risk of nitrogen sickness but now the increased oxygen introduces the problems with pure oxygen, though to a much lesser degree. Even so, the effect of increased percentage of oxygen starts having its effect as the diver goes deeper, so there is a limit to the depth to which the diver can descend when Nitrox is used...[BlueFlipperDiving]

Health Tip: Scuba Diving Safety

Scuba diving may allow you to see some amazing underwater places. But it's important to become scuba-certified before you hit the water.

According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, certification may help prevent these possible pitfalls of the sport:

* Failure to relieve pressure in your ears by "popping them" can lead to inner ear barotrauma, which can cause you to lose hearing and feel very dizzy.
* If you don't breathe correctly as you float to the surface after your dive, pulmonary barotrauma can occur. This can trigger symptoms including pain in the chest, difficulty breathing and a hoarse voice.
* "The bends," also called decompression sickness, also can occur as you float to the surface. This serious condition can cause nitrogen bubbles to form in the blood, and can affect the lungs, brain and spinal cord.
* An arterial gas embolism (AGE) causes bubbles in the blood, which could reach the brain. This very serious diving injury can lead to symptoms including unconsciousness, numbness, paralysis, general weakness or tingling skin...[USNews&WorldReport]

Hyperventilating while underwater is dangerous

Question: A few weeks ago, a Greenwood High School swimmer saved her coach after he passed out and stopped breathing while trying to swim distance underwater. What can you tell me about shallow water blackout?
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Answer: Passing out is probably not very common, but it's something that's preventable. The thing that alarms me is that when this begins, you have only 21/2 minutes to rescue someone. So this coach was just really lucky that somebody was alert and knew CPR.

Q: Why is this so dangerous?

A: What happens is when a person hyperventilates like that, it doesn't increase the oxygen level much, but it decreases the carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide is what causes us to breathe. So . . . as you're swimming underwater, your oxygen level goes down and carbon dioxide level goes up.

If you hyperventilate, you drive the carbon dioxide level down so far that it's climbing but not enough to make you want to breathe. And it may cause a potassium imbalance -- because something causes a heart arrhythmia. If you couple that with a high potassium or dropping potassium, particularly dropping potassium, if someone has some propensity to have a heart arrhythmia, that's what kills them.

Usually these people are written off as drowning (victims), but they don't really drown. They don't have much water in their lungs because they don't inhale.

Conceivably, this could happen anywhere that people hyperventilate...[IndyStar.com]

Doctor's Orders with Dr. Stephen Ponder

Question: I was told that because I have type 1 diabetes, I should never scuba dive. Is this true?

Answer: Nonsense. I was certified as a scuba diver almost 30 years ago! I recommend you get a medical exam and make sure you don't have any serious diabetes complications, like eye disease (proliferative retinopathy) or hypoglycemia unawareness. I also suggest you check your blood sugar frequently on days before, during and after dives since diving burns lots of calories and increases risk of low blood sugars. It's best to be trained by a certified diving instructor. Discuss your situation with the instructor and make sure he or she is comfortable working with diabetic students. There are some excellent local diving programs and a diabetes-specific program in the Virgin Islands that is highly regarded.

Dr. Stephen Ponder, who has Type 1 diabetes, has been a pediatric endocrinologist for 20 years. He is the director of the Childrens Diabetes and Endocrine Center of South Texas at Driscoll Childrens Hospital...[Caller.com]