Breathing diffuculties

[TerryDiver]

Relatively new diver, and would like help. When I did my open water cert. dives-cold water- 7 mil wetsuit on, after several dives I had diffuculty breathing-shortness of breath, much mucous, unable to take a deep breath. Never a problem while underwater, only after surfacing. Problem persists for 10-30 minutes, then slowly disappears. I have made 10 warm water(Carribean) dives, not wearing a wetsuit, and the problem never appeared again. My doctor has no idea what is causing the problem so - any ideas here amoung the experienced doctor/diver types? Could this be wesuit related? Water temperature? Mental? Thanks for your help.

 

[blacknet]

Hello,

Let me be the first to say welcome aboard!

If I would guess (and i'm not a doctor mind you) you could have came up just fast enought to cause some slight problems like this.

Could be the constriction effect on the suit/BC (been a victim of the improper fitting wet suit) but typicaly in the wetsuit thing you are very tired. As for mental anything can happen on that one (see my psychosomatic post earlier)

If you was having any type of congestion in the lungs it could have been some type of 'reverse squeeze'.

May also be a temp related problem (breathing harder in cold vs warm air temp)

One thing I can suggest is to wear properly fit exposure suits (not tight and not very loose) and always take your slow time about surfacing, the slower the better.

Ed

 

[large_diver]

I'm not a doc, but -- asthma can sometimes be triggered by exposure to cold temps......

You may want to go see an allergy/asthma specialist on this one. If the cold is truly triggering asthma-like symptoms, you should probably not do any more diving in cold water.

Don't mean to be alarmist, but it is something you definitely want to get checked out before diving again in colder temps. Also -- call or e-mail DAN for more info.