Ok... so you got people incited. Not everyone agrees with your logic.
--My logic is too many people are dying diving, and practice education and health and fitness are the keys to reducing that. What is your counter position?
Rebreather divers are dying in droves? A lot more people die on OC each year. It just so happens that there were recently 3 in the last few weeks... The causes haven't even been determined, and you're going off on physical fitness or lack thereof as the cause.
Anyone dying is too many. I count 12 rebreather divers this year, from a population several orders of magnitude lower than OC. I think there are about 150 OC deaths a year and a total diving population of 2.5 million. I think 13 out of a total rb population of less than 7,000 is "droves".
You think people on "this board" may not notice? Look around. Almost every single scuba accident is discussed on "this board" and people discuss and learn.
As the popularity of recreational rebreather use grows, so will the mortality rate.
Hopefully not.
Telling everyone to get off the couch and play underwater hockey doesn't really fly with all of the arguments you made to support yours and other's people's claims like panic happens because people are fat.
Now now, The argument is that when stressed, all other things being equal, a fitter persons perceived anxiety level will be lower.
While I haven't disagreed with the premise that good physical fitness is important; your overall arguments are kind of thin. You came here to incite (on internet forums... that called Trolling).
Really I thought trolling was attacking people instead of ideas.
I read your threads on the "other boards" and people just patted you on the back. Apparently that's not what happened here. We can all learn from this discussion here.. maybe even you?
What would you have me learn?
Have you ever played underwater hockey?
From:
Medical Fitness For Diving
Non-air Gas Mixtures
Women & Diving
Medical Fitness for Diving
Asthma & Diving
The Great Debate
Glossary
All About DAN
Scuba Training Agencies
Magazines & Newsletters
Books & Videos
Diving Odds N' Ends
Internet Links
SECTION NMedical Fitness for Diving: Guidelines Real and Imagined
ARE THERE REGULATIONS REGARDING WHO MAY SCUBA DIVE?
No. There are no local, state or federal laws regulating recreational scuba diving. Some regulations apply to certain aspects of equipment, such as tank inspection and air compressor maintenance, but there are no regulations regarding
divers.
New applicants for certification may be required to obtain medical clearance if they acknowledge a problem on their health questionnaire, but there is nothing to compel an applicant to admit an active medical problem. On the other hand, relatively few physicians are familiar with scuba diving, so an encounter between diver-with-medical-question and a physician may not result in correct advice or information. Even when physicians are knowledge-able in this area, there is apt to be disagreement about what disqualifies people from diving.
WHO IS FIT FOR DIVING?
Before discussing medical conditions that might prohibit diving, it will be useful to discuss fitness in a general sense. In Section B I explained that diving requires at least a sound mind, heart and lungs. Beyond these basics, much has been written about physical fitness for diving, including the subjects of exercise, nutrition, and physical stamina.
Clearly one does not have to be an athlete or body builder to dive. On the other hand, diving is not recommended for true "couch potatoes" either. It is probably risky to be sedentary in life style � overweight, no exercise, no routine physical exertion on the job or otherwise � and then go diving. Diving physicians believe that the more physically fit the individual, the less risk in diving. There are several cogent reasons for scuba divers to be physically fit.
1) Diving can be strenuous. It can require sudden bursts of physical exertion such as when swimming against a current, climbing onto an unsteady boat, or rescuing a buddy. Obviously the more fit you are, the better you can handle heightened physical requirements. Many a diver has "tired out" and had to be rescued because he didn't have the stamina for unexpected physical stress.
2) Physically fit people tend to use less air than the unfit. Hyperventilation and panic stress reactions are more likely to occur in the physically unfit.
3) Physical fitness reduces the risk of heart attack, which is a major cause of diving fatality.
4) Physical fitness may reduce the risk of developing DCS. Apart from the exercise jocks, how does someone know if they are physically fit? Sophisticated exercise testing can give numbers to go by, but such tests are cumbersome, expensive and hardly necessary (with the exception of testing for underlying heart disease). In truth, if the question is just about overall physical fitness, and not about underlying heart disease,
you are probably the best judge. You are probably
physically fit for scuba diving if you can swim several laps in the pool without difficulty (the basic swimming test for enrollment into a scuba certification course), ride a bicycle for half an hour, or jog a half mile without collapsing. Certainly if you perform aerobic exercise regularly you are probably physically fit.
You are probably
physically unfit if you don't regularly exercise, or you are short of breath with simple efforts like stair climbing or brisk walking, or you exceed 20% of your ideal body weight and/or smoke heavily. In other words, the question of physical fitness for an activity like scuba diving is mostly one of common sense. Common sense suggests that, since a scuba diver's life may depend on heavy physical exertion at some point, you should not be grossly overweight, should not smoke, and you should engage in some aerobic exercise on a frequent basis. The exercise could be bicycling, running, swimming, racquet sports, or any other aerobic activity. (Exceptions to this recommendation are physically impaired people who may take special training to go scuba diving; see below.)
I take back everything bad I have ever though about GUE
FROM
http://www.gue.com/?q=en/node/868:
Cardiovascular Conditioning
Some experienced divers believe that exercise will do little for their diving since they already have a good breathing rate and efficient water skills. This is a very limited view of what their heart and lungs do for them. Achieving a high level of cardiovascular fitness does a lot more than just improve your gas consumption. It may also increase the safety of your dives in several ways:
1. Increased physical reserves for dealing with problems.
2
. Delayed/reduced panic response.
3. Increased rate of inert gas elimination.
4. Reduced cost of free phase gas formation.
Increased Physical Reserves:
This is a no-brainer. The fitter you are, the more physically demanding a task you can handle successfully. You can swim faster and farther. You can manage larger amounts of equipment. Your heartrate and respiration are lower, and gas consumption will increase less for a given increase in workload. There are no more obvious results of cardiovascular conditioning than these.
Imagine being able to upgrade your car from your current engine to one that is more powerful and gets better gas mileage. As your muscle cells adapt to exercise, they increase their number of mitochondria (the energy machines of the cell) and their quantity of aerobic enzymes (the oxygen-utilizing chemicals). With these adaptations, muscle cells become stronger while becoming much more efficient with the oxygen they receive. A fit diver will thus be able to perform more work with each breath of gas, or use less gas to perform the same amount of work as a less fit diver. Not only does this give you the capacity to do more during each dive, this also increases the chance that you can solve any problems that might arise.
The Panic Response:
An important side benefit of a reduction in heart rate and respiration relates to the panic response. The human brain responds to an increase in heart rate and respiration with an increased emotional response, whether it is love, anger, or panic. A feedback loop forms in a tense situation when a diver senses danger, then responds with an increase in physical activity. This causes the divers heartrate and respiration to increase, which results in the brain increasing its perception of danger, which then elevates the divers heartrate and respiration, which then further increases the brains perception of danger, and so on until the diver can no longer perform the appropriate response. Thus, the fitter you are, the further you will be from your panic threshold merely because your heartrate and respiration are not as affected by increasing physical demands.
There are some facts.
But I'm not sure what the counter claim is, and the supporting facts.
I would be perfectly content with one less death and thousands irritated, than not doing anything. But I'm sure that's not the case.
By the way my replies come fast because I'm recovering from Achillies surgery. All I do is sleep, walk the dog and swim 2 hours a day. The other 13 hours a day I am free to read and noodle around on the internet.
