Whaylon.....I found a great Chat with one of the Dive Doctors on SB...and they said studies have shown there is no greater risk. Sorry that I can't find that chat, I've looked for the last 45 minutes without success.
Medical studies, though, are not always conclusive and they may not always be right. Me, I'm going to assume I have a greater risk (if only because I have forgotten the basics) and dive more conservatively, and smartly, than I did before! I found an old thread that talked about the importance of safety stops..which I am certainly going to integrate....cliff notes of the recommendations are below.
'I found a relevant DAN article at
DAN Divers Alert Network - you may have to be a member to access it (not sure). A few quotes from the article are http:/news/Article.aspx?newsid=514
What is interesting, and not necessarily intuitive, is that an in-water stop with a relatively rapid ascent rate appears to be more effective at eliminating inert gas than a very slow ascent rate. As can be seen from Table 2, a five-minute in-water stop is much more effective than simply slowing the ascent rate, even though the total ascent time is not much different (6.6 minutes vs. five minutes). That total ascent time also remains very short. We know the spinal cord has a 12.5-minute halftime. Thus, 6.6 minutes is an insufficient total ascent time for the spinal cord which is, by then, virtually fully saturated (as seen in Table 1).
At 30 feet per minute (which is the ascent rate more commonly used today with a five-minute safety stop at 20 feet), the time to surface from 100 feet will be some eight minutes. This is better, but still a lot shorter than the 12.5-minute halftime of the spinal cord (not considering that gas elimination is slower than uptake). A plausible alternative might therefore be to ascend at 30 feet per minute but to add an additional "Haldanian" stop at about half the depth (remember, the depth is 100 feet / 15 meters) at 50 feet for five minutes. This gives 13.3 minutes of total ascent time2.
With respect to deep stops:
International DAN research studies have recently clearly confirmed these hypotheses: 15 divers were enrolled in a study and each given eight possible combinations of ascent rates, and either a shallow stop, or a deep and a shallow stop. The repetitive dives were to 80 feet (25 meters) for 25 minutes; the surface interval was three hours, 30 minutes; and the final dive was to 80 feet for 20 minutes. Ascent rates were 60, 30 and 10 feet per minute. The matrix is shown in Table 3 and the results of 181 dives are shown in Table 4.
Clearly, the best decompression schedule is Profile 6 (see highlights in both tables). With an ascent rate of 33 feet (10 meters) per minute, and two stops at 45 feet (13.5 meters) and 9 feet (2.7 meters) respectively, this profile had the lowest bubble score of 1.76.'
Full post here:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/as...ed-dcs-first-time-terrified-dive-again-6.html
---------- Post added January 26th, 2013 at 10:01 AM ----------
Also, I was reading another post that helped me understand how little I know...
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ba...s-psychology-diving-beyond-ones-training.html
And a very relevant point was made by Jim:
"No one has told them that that this is an extreme sport and people die doing it. The agencies try to insure that instructors make this all about fun, sun, safe, easy to do, anyone can do it, and put nothing in the materials that illustrate just how dangerous certain aspects of it are and what the actual outcomes can be."
The more I read, the more I realize this is a dangerous sport and I have to be very prepared and very cautious. So thank to everyone who is helping me do just that!
