Uh-oh, LOL

[Oni]

It is not a problem, but I do express some concern for the issue of bone health while diving at an early age of 14.

"Oni, Welcome to the dry dock. I would suggest that if you have to get re-certified after you reach a certain age, do it by taking some type of advanced class that interests you. Such a class may not be available from PADI, so I would suggest looking around. My Daughter and Son are 18 and 20 and have not yet been re-certified, although it is way past time.

Another thing you need to know that I am sure no one has told you. You should not dive a lot or dive deep until you are about 20 years old. Nothing to scare you, but it is known that nitrogen does get absorbed into the bones. Young bones that are still forming (and yours are) can absorb nitrogen, too. I would expect that softer bones would absorb more nitrogen. There have been no studies that I know about, but I would not let my kids dive below about 45 ft and only a couple of dive trips a year until they were adults. I didn't want them to be the guinea pigs for such a study. I remember one person from another SCUBA board that believes she has an extremely bad back due to lots of deep diving while she was young. Her parents owned a dive resort and she dove a lot. If my memory serves me correctly her bones are very porous, like having osteoperosis. I tell you this so you can look at the information and make good decisions, have fun diving, it's a blast.

Maybe this should be a question for the Dive Medicine section.
__________________
DSSW,

Dennis"

 

[scubadoc]

Every diving parent seems to want his children (and any one else) to learn to dive and enjoy the unique thrill that we experience at depth. It even seems to take on an evangelical raison d'etre. I felt this way myself for many
years until I started advising so many people about initiating scuba lessons at a formative age. It became clear that there are lesser and greater instructors, brighter and more average children, more and less ethical scuba shops and an industry that seems ever more determined that the age for scuba diving be lowered.

Children divers should use dive profiles which minimize risk for decompression sickness to eliminate concern for injury to growing tissues, such as the growth plates of bones. There are no good studies that indicate that the growth plates (epiphyseal plates) are a particular problem -- just knowledge that an area of altered vascularity may be more susceptible to bubbles. However, there are good animal studies that show that the pressure changes and weightlessness of space cause changes in the growth plates of rats; and, there are studies that show a reversal of the growth process when direct 'expander' pressure is applied to bone but there are no human studies ( and there will never be any due to ethics considerations ) that show changes in teens.

Since the damage that can be done to bone is in direct proportion to the length of time at depth, it would appear that these factors should be restricted in the growing teen-ager who has a life-time of diving ahead. Arbitrary depths and times have to be chosen to maintain low levels of onboard nitrogen; carefully monitored ascent rates with safety deco stops are definitely suggested.

Possibly of greater importance are the 25-30% of incompletely closed foramen ovales (a hole in the inner wall of the heart that closes off after birth) in all children need to be kept in mind when deciding whether or not a child should dive. This figure may even be higher in the younger teens (possibly into the 50-60% range) if some figures of open PFOs are taken in to account from pathological mortality studies. What effect bubbles crossing the PFO into the arterial circulation would have on the child generally (brain, spinal cord as well as bone) is something that is quite troubling to me.

The bottom line is that we just don't know (and won't know as there will be no studies done) - so why take a chance with the future of your child's bone growth and maturing process?

For further reading go to

Dive Training Magazine, Nov. 2000, pp. 40-53.

"Junior Divers", by Paul Thombs, MD, Alert Diver, 13th Special Anniversary
Issue, DAN.

http://www.scuba-doc.com/teens.htm

 

[DennisW]

Thanks scubadoc for your answer. Like you said, "We just don't know...". I wanted my children to know the joys of diving, but I really didn't want them to be the study subjects, so I limited their dive trips and depths. They are both excellent divers and are very comfortable underwater and have been able to experience something I think is very special. Just not as deep or as many times as I have. They will have a lifetime of the experience with the knowledge that SCUBA should be approached with caution and respect. Then have a blast!