joint pain

[mlove]

Rick,
I have noticed that I do not have arthritis discomfort while diving. I just thought it was from the excitement of the dive. But you may be onto someting.
Mike

 

[Dr Deco]

Dear Mike:

A few words regarding your remarks on urination from 6-29-01. What I meant was the INABILITY to urinate. This is the opposite of the common situation that you mentioned. Urinating when immersed is caused by a shift of fluid from the lower body (legs) into the trunk. The body perceives this as an increase in fluid that it then eliminates. This would also occur if you drank a large volume of water. (In fact, the ancient Roman word for divers was urinator , “i.e., those who urinate.”)

The problem to which I was referring is the paralysis of the muscles concerned with urination. This results from a growth of bubbles in the spinal cord.

Dr Deco

 

[scubadoc]

Getting back to the original question about joint pains and diving - there is a situation associated with deep diving on nitrox or heliox mixtures called 'compression arthralgia'.

This is related in Bove's Diving Medicine on page 328 and consists of pain, popping or cracking in one or more joints on movement. These symptoms generally begin at 200 fsw, increasing as the depth increases and is aggravated with exercise.

Rapid compression aggravates and the syndrome is seen on saturation dives, lessening slowly over a period of days at depth.

Symptoms get better in reverse order on no-saturation dives as the diver is decompressed, generally becoming symptom-free upon surfacing.

The problem is the difficulty in distinguishing residual compression arthralgia from the joint pain of a decompression accident.