???Future of Open Circuit Mixed Gas and Rebreather Diving???

[Wibble]

Can you not feel yourself getting out of breath, it a fairly basic rule. If you don’t have the fitness to do a job stay away from it.

You don’t have to be a genius to understand your fitness levels

It’s not "out of breath" as in panting like a you’ve just run up a hill and which you’d notice as you won’t be able to do much else. It’s elevated breathing which you don’t normally notice, for example briefly swimming against a current or getting a stressor or shock as you get caught up in some line or a shark swam past when some adrenaline kicks in.

 

[BlueTrin]

I want to throw in my personal anecdote here, take it for what it's worth.

CO2 narc feels different than nitrogen narc. CO2 in me starts with a feeling of anxiety, narcosis feels more like I am just slow.

Anybody else?

How did you know that it was CO2 narc?

 

[Celt]

It’s not "out of breath" as in panting like a you’ve just run up a hill and which you’d notice as you won’t be able to do much else. It’s elevated breathing which you don’t normally notice, for example briefly swimming against a current or getting a stressor or shock as you get caught up in some line or a shark swam past when some adrenaline kicks in.

Everyone has a certain amount of breathing reserve, feeling out of breath is the warning that you’re becoming “ short of breath “ You must stop and control your breathing before becoming short of breath. If you become short of breath and start to shallow breath on OC you can’t recover without reducing your depth and gas density.
P.S. breathing reserve is dependant of fitness.

 

[lostsheep]

How did you know that it was CO2 narc?

Post 189

 

[lukeb]

How did you know that it was CO2 narc?

For me, I started noticing that when I was relaxed, doing very little effort, and in great conditions, I felt fuzzy narcosis symptoms. But if I was working hard, or not breathing efficiently, I got a totally different kind of symptoms more related to CO2. The big difference for me was headaches. With depth narcosis, no headaches afterwards. With CO2 induced narcosis, the headaches lasted even after I surfaced and the other narcosis symptoms had subsided.

Again, just my personal experience, but using this knowledge I have learnt to manage my deeper dives a lot better to keep symptoms as minimal as I can. Still not perfect, but better.

 

[BlueTrin]

Thanks, asking because I had one bad episode of narcosis. During my ANDP class, I was asked to tow someone and found it a bit tiring, we then did immediately a dive to 45m on weak Nitrox and that was not pleasant at all.

I wonder if maybe I was abit out of breath and had a bit of CO2. This episode of narcosis is the only instance where I felt slightly paranoid.