Undercurrent--"Why Divers Die"

[in_cavediver]

The statement in the article was that 45% of dead divers were obese while 30% of the general population was obese ( by the >30 bmi). It seems unusual and somehow out of the expected that this degree of obesity is involved in a sport that can be strenuous. How many obese marathoners or tennis players make up the deaths in those sports? Likely less than 45%

It is just a message that could be useful to some. Ignore, if you will, at your own fol-lie.

Ah, this is again meaningless without one more piece of information. To gauge significance, I want to know the estimated number of total dives done by both classes. Without that, the accident data has little meaning. Who cares about the total human population, its not germane. We need to know the diving 'population' and in this case, that's made up of dives. Then you can get raw frequency numbers about accidents.

I'll also add, I have yet to you see address the interdependence issue. Claiming BMI is causal is like claiming black wetsuits are causal. Neat idea and makes you feel good but may be coincidental and not causal. No effort was made to ensure the relationship was anything other than coincidental.

Most of the DAN data that I have seen links more to undertraining and diver error (my opinion) than to BMI. I haven't run the statistics or anything technical but my mark one eyeball sees this as the common trend. (again, my opinion).

So, does this mean I think its OK to be obese. Well, yes and no. It definitely healther to be of a more ideal wieght. No question about it. I just don't think this is the end all be all answer that it was presented to be and I don't consider it a contradiction to diving.

You want to make a supportable statement, try something like this "obese dives are more likely to suffer a coronary event than there non-obese cohorts". Its s defendable and proven (via medical studies) fact. If you want to infer that to diving, you can only state they are more likely to have a coronary event while diving than a non-obese person while diving.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Most of the DAN data that I have seen links more to undertraining and diver error (my opinion) than to BMI. I haven't run the statistics or anything technical but my mark one eyeball sees this as the common trend. (again, my opinion)

Assuming that Duke has access to someone who actually understands statistics, I'd say the reason they haven't done any calculations is because the necessary data doesn't exist. They don't know how many dives are being done by how many divers.

That said, what do we do in the field when we don't have enough naturally occuring data to tell us what we want to know? We disign an an experiment and or series of experiments to create the conditions we want to study.

I think we could do the same with diving and some time ago I considered such a study related to diving but never did anything with it. Maybe I will.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Well all else being equal, it might be healthier to be of an ideal weight but all else is not always equal. There are plenty of problems with the statistical analysis of health risks too which is why they keep doing studies and getting different answers. Trying to further stretch that to dive related inferences is really an excersize in futility.

 

[jbeach69]

This is something I have had to deal with almost my entire thirty five years or so of diving. Every instructor I had told me I had to lose weight, right up to the IT trainer who almost kicked me out of his IT class because of my size... until I had to rescue him in rough seas on our final check out dive as well as the other three 'fit' divers that I also pulled back to the boat... Big people can be just as healthy as others, and so called 'fit' people can be just as likey to have a diving accident as any other... it is not the size of a person diving that may be the risk, it is the overall readiness of that person doing a particular dive....

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Insulting potential customers is too smart.

Dave

Yabbut some people are really good at it ... especially, it seems, people who sell scuba gear. Wonder if we could run some statistics on that ...

With respect to overweight divers ... didn't we just have this conversation recently?

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Diver-Sixx]

This is something I have had to deal with almost my entire thirty five years or so of diving. Every instructor I had told me I had to lose weight, right up to the IT trainer who almost kicked me out of his IT class because of my size... until I had to rescue him in rough seas on our final check out dive as well as the other three 'fit' divers that I also pulled back to the boat... Big people can be just as healthy as others, and so called 'fit' people can be just as likey to have a diving accident as any other... it is not the size of a person diving that may be the risk, it is the overall readiness of that person doing a particular dive....

Rock On !! I agree, I have seen over weight divers that I would trust more than thinner divers because of overall readiness. Like I said bfore some people just should`nt be in the water no matter their size and if you are a DM,AI,OWSI or above
I bet You have had to deal with it again and again. I`m not trying to take anything away from anyone, I think everyone should try diving, Its Just some will get it right away and some never will.

 

[fisherdvm]

This is something I have had to deal with almost my entire thirty five years or so of diving. Every instructor I had told me I had to lose weight, right up to the IT trainer who almost kicked me out of his IT class because of my size... until I had to rescue him in rough seas on our final check out dive as well as the other three 'fit' divers that I also pulled back to the boat... Big people can be just as healthy as others, and so called 'fit' people can be just as likey to have a diving accident as any other... it is not the size of a person diving that may be the risk, it is the overall readiness of that person doing a particular dive....

There are many obese (however, not morbidly obese) people who are in better aerobic shape than I am. You see it in the gym frequently. They are the ones that exercises daily, but still consume more calories than they could burn.

Certainly, you might be in this catergory.

 

[webjr]

Looks can be deceiving. I had a student once that looked quite a bit overweight. His buddy in the class was a typical looking young, thin , tall kid who looked to be in good condition. When they did their swims, it was the thin kid I thought I would have to grab to keep from drowning. He finished his swim (barely) and promptly got sick on the side of the pool. The big guy wasn't even breathing hard.
Don't judge a book by it's cover. There's too many factors involved in "fitness" to go by size alone.

 

[GreenDiverDown]

With respect to overweight divers ... didn't we just have this conversation recently?

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Well, sorta...

... but it ended prematurely when the fatties ran off the fitness freaks.

 

[Fish_Whisperer]

Well, sorta...

... but it ended prematurely when the fatties ran off the fitness freaks.

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