Apnea
What is Apnea and Apnea Diving?
Let's start with a quote from Wikipedia:
"Under normal conditions, humans cannot store much oxygen in the body. Prolonged apnea leads to severe lack of oxygen in the blood circulation. Permanent brain damage can occur after as little as three minutes and death will inevitably ensue after a few more minutes unless ventilation is restored. However, under special circumstances such as hypothermia, hyperbaric oxygenation, apneic oxygenation (see below), or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, much longer periods of apnea may be tolerated without severe consequences. Untrained humans cannot sustain voluntary apnea for more than one or two minutes. (Smokers, in most cases, can only endure much shorter periods of voluntary apnea due to damages to the lung's alveoli and thus their lung capacities and gas exchange efficiency are decreased[citation needed]). The reason for the time limit of voluntary apnea is that the rate of breathing and the volume of each breath are tightly regulated to maintain constant values of CO2 tension and pH of the blood. In apnea, CO2 is not removed through the lungs and accumulates in the blood. The consequent rise in CO2 tension and drop in pH result in stimulation of the respiratory centre in the brain which eventually cannot be overcome voluntarily. When a person is immersed in water, physiological changes due to the mammalian diving reflex enable somewhat longer tolerance of apnea even in untrained persons. Tolerance can in addition be trained. The ancient technique of free-diving requires breath-holding, and world-class free-divers can hold their breath underwater up to depths of 214 metres and for more than four minutes. Apneists, in this context, are people who can hold their breath for a long time."
As avid divers, we love to observe marine life underwater. Arguably, the less gear you need, and the less noise (bubbles) you produce, the less you are disturbing the marine environment and you will get a more realistic and closer look at things underwater.
Further, whilst SCUBA diving is to be considered a safe activity when sticking to the proper procedures, you and your buddy or dive team are "diving the plan" and staying within personal limits and training experience, a worst-case situation of being out of air is still a possibility. If it ever came to that, being trained in Apnea/Freediving provides an extra safety measure as the body's reaction will be known and hopefully the confidence to deal with the situation is available. The onsetting of symptoms, such as contractions of your diaphragm, will have been experienced in as safe environment beforehand and you will have the knowledge that you can still safely reach the surface from many meters down if this were to happen.
The pages in this section will cover our progress and impressions of this sport, as well as apnea & freediving gear reviews.
Stay tuned!
- September 6, 2009
- Apnea AIDA** Course
Our first APNEA Apnea Course - done in early September 2009 in Munich with Christian Eckl of Divesport.de
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