Long term physiological effects of diving?

[Sas]

Forgive me if this has been raised before but my searching was fruitless but I was curious about the long term physiological effects of diving on the body. (if you can find me a forum topic already, that would be really appreciated)

Just heard two guys on the boat the other day talking about how divers go deaf quicker than the rest of the population, which got me wondering if a. this is true and b. what other type of problems are caused by diving (if any). I thought I'd ask around here about studies and the like that have been done on the effects of frequent diving over the long term.

Some of the more interesting google results require a paid subscription to online magazines so haven't had much luck there other than this article Long-term Effects of Sport Diving which concludes with this "Negative effects of long-term deep diving include dysbaric osteonecrosis, decreased pulmonary function due to airway narrowing, hearing loss, and liver changes" among a few other things. Doesn't sound great to be honest, so wondering what people think of the study and its conclusions. Won't change my diving to be honest, but would be nice to know of ways to reduce my chances of things such as hearing loss, etc.

 

[Charlie59]

Could you speak up, I'm a diver.

Did you try DAN website for info, if you don't have DAN services you might want to consider obtaining them.

I know that I will live longer if I dive, I won't go crazy and jump off a bridge as soon.

 

[Gene_Hobbs]

I would start here (the large version is worth the download time):

Shilling, CW and Beckett, MW (eds). National Plan for the Safety and Health of Divers in Their Quest for Subsea Energy. NIOSH Contract 210-75-0078 RRR ID: 4085

From there, there have been a couple of workshops on long term health effects but keep in mind that the subject populations are commercial divers and not recreational divers for the majority of this work. Not that it make anything less likely but the risk is different.

There are many papers on the specific topics you decide to look deeper into in the RRR. My talk on "diving medical literature" is a good resource for the databases to search for even more information.

Good luck!

 

[Tigerman]

The longterm effects from frequent, deep diving is not all good. Infact a lot of the pioneer north sea divers got serious health issues. However as Gene Hobbs says, most research on these topics has been done on commercial divers and not recreational divers. Another issue we have to consider here is that the ones who now show long-term effects from diving started to dive in a time where diving was quite different to what it is now.
So give me 40 years and ill tell you if I have suffered any long-term effects from recreational diving

 

[bottomfeeder22]

My father was an experimental diver for the US Navy(1960s-1970s). They didn't know it at the time(read- experimental), but the trimix profiles they put him on eventually gave him degenerative disc disease, a condition that deteriorates the discs in your back. He now has one completely gone, and several more are falling apart. Really scary thing is, the disease incubates for 20+ years, and then shows up as you age. He didn't start having problems until the 1990s. However, I'm an avid diver and take solace in the fact that his experience made our tables safer today.

 

[muddiver]

Most of the issues the OP mentioned are from long term exposure, in long intervals to a hyperbarric environment (i.e. saturation or commercial diving). I don't think there is any scientific based information on these types of medical issues from SCUBA diving. It just isn't feasable to carry a large enough cylinder to get multiple, long period exposures on SCUBA.

Hearing and ears are the only exception I would say because it is very easy to rupture an ear drum. Once that happens it is my understanding that repeated injury can be much easier to to accomplish.

 

[Rhone Man]

I only know by observation that the long serving dive instructors out in this part of the world seem to me to look old before their time. I am not sure that has so much to do with diving as it does with being out in the sun all day every day for 25 years, and the stress of financially managing a dive store, but there it is.

 

[on_two_wheels]

Anyone see the Dirty Jobs episode in which Mike Rowe went ice diving? The owner of the company he dove with had been diving for 42 years and was 60 years old. Mike Rowe looked older than he did!! As mentioned about the instructors looking old before their time, I agree that it is probably the sun doing that, not the diving.

 

[cudachaser]

OMG, I have what your father has. I've been diving for 44 years, Teaching for 30 years!

Joe