Question about headache after dive....

[cliffdiver]

Not only do we tend to "forget" to drink enough water when we're immersed in it all day, breathing dry scuba air tends to accelerate water loss from breathing, and diving in salt water (whose salinity is about three times that of our bodily fluids) will actually suck water out of you by osmosis through the skin (not much, but when you're already dehydrated it can be the straw that breaks the camel's back).
Rick

Unusual medical conditions aside, you certainly cannot lose any water through the skin via osmosis, regardless of the salinity of the water you're diving in. Your healthy skin is too good of a barrier for that to happen. However, everyone is very right with respect to the dehydrating effects of breathing scuba air.

Every time you breath, above or below the water's surface, your departing breath contains moisture (read: a little bit o' water). Above surface, you breath back in, and you get a little of that moisture back from the normal air. Beyond that, you drink to get the rest. Now, breathing off scuba, of course, means you expel a bit of moisture with each exhalation but don't replace one bit of it when you inhale that dry air. At the end of a dive, hundreds of net-moisture-loss breaths later, you emerge dehydrated.

It is amazing the degree to which dehydration can contribute to headaches. It is equally amazing the degree to which we should all be slugging back the fluids during SIs and after diving for the day. I cannot say this is why your buddy got his headache, but it is likely, at a minimum, that dehydration aggravated it if it didn't largely cause it.

 

[d33ps1x]

Apparently, the cause of headaches can be anything from improper breathing pattens to where you position your tank.

Oh yah. And I no longer get the occasional back of the head headache from where the valve clocked me now that I dive with a bp/wing.

Thanks for the reminder.

 

[Mo2vation]

Ever seen anyone with a slight caffeine withdrawl? What did they look like? Hmmm...I might resemble that comment.
Brian

I think I remember someone like that... We now call him "Lucky" as he was the ONLY guy within spitting distance of the greater Seattle area who, for some unknown reason, DID NOT start his day with the requisite cup 'o coffee...

:biggrin2:

K

 

[Genesis]

Couple weeks ago me and my buddy went diving in West Palm. We went out to dive around 2 oclock and did our 2nd dive around 4 45. We had only eaten a bagel around 9 oclock that morning. My friend dove air on the first dive, then nitrox on the 2nd. When he came up from the 2nd dive he had a SEVERE headache and it was really killing him. What was this caused from? It wasn't DCS I think. Could it have been lack of food that day combined with nitrox?

See my thread in "Basic Scuba Discussions" entitled "Do you Trust your gas supplier?"

It is entirely POSSIBLE that you have low-level CO contamination in your gas supply. It is also trivially easy to check it, and trivially easy for SHOPS to check it.

Until they start, you have only yourself - and whatever amount of he|| you can raise to get them to do so.

A device to do so is outlined in the referenced post.

Look here:
http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=43477

 

[iflyprops]

Haha, that was me with the headache....actually just posted another question about that... http://69.93.91.170/t43851.html

Hey Chris!