Severe Headaches When Diving Deep

[Neilwood]

Thanks! I look forward to experiencing the correlation between bottom time and experience.

Now this is an official thread hijack...

I've become quite good leaving the inflator valve alone. I basically add a few puffs on the way down and dont touch it once I get to depth. In fact, I attribute this a little bit to my odd breathing. Part of my strategy for not using the inflator valve is to run a little negative and make it up with lung capacity (I feel like I have huge lungs underwater with big swings in buoyancy during normal breathing). This means I often avoid breathing out fully to keep myself off the bottom.

I'm also proficient at keeping my hands still. Initially I would hold my hands together under me against my lower stomach, now I hold them in front of me grasping my camera.

Finning I can definitely work on quieting down. I fin almost constantly. This is probably mostly related to my negative bias wrt buoyancy, but also because I'm always turning and twisting to look and take photos or video...and because I'm usually on a dive that involves getting somewhere or seeing a larger area.

I've actually been thinking about trying to do a few dives where I'm not trying to go anywhere for just this reason - to practice holding position, minimizing movement and training myself to have more precise control of orientation with minimal translation. Just go down to something interesting and examine every nook and cranny.

Obviously, to practice this, I also need to be a little more diligent about adding enough air to my wing to lose a little more negative bias.

I guess I have the two things to work on during my next dive (after breathing and relaxing!)!

Thanks!

If you are finning almost constantly, you will burn air and generate bags of CO2 (which may cause headaches). Try to get neutral in the water and especially work out your trim to try to be near horizontal in the water - that way you lose less energy trying to maintain depth. Finning should be minimal even if moving - kick, glide, kick, glide. When trying to maintain position it should be even less - possibly slight flicks of your fins to rotate.

This is something I am going to try to work on this winter if I can get some time in the water.

 

[Bogtrotter]

I've had a few pounders when I tried to control breathing on deep dives. I quickly resolved that I'd rather lose 10 mins of bottom time than spend the rest of the day with a pounding headache. Just breathe easy and relax.