Posted by Wayne on December 19, 2001 at 11:36:24:
In Reply to: Re: The mysteries posted by Steve on December 19, 2001 at 11:06:32:
Back in '75 we were taught to skip breath as a way to reduce air consumption. It was a wrong approach, based on fables and annecdotes and a lack of science. The logic seemed good: Since you are at increqased presure, you have more oxygen molecules availalble for the blood and you need to breathe less. Now we all know better. I suspect the problem resides in the fact that CO2 is carried in solution in the blood rather than my a transport device such as a red blood cell, and the lungs need to have a very low level of CO2 to drive the CO2 across. But I have since learned to breather better. When I am totally relaxed during a dive, I do not breathe much and I tend to fall into the old habits. It is funny beause I am a big guy and I use less ar than my 10 year old daughter. But I just sip at the reg as I need it. It is easy for me to fall back into the skip thing if I am not paying attention to breathing. Then I feel it on the boat. Tylenol fixes it. Then I am better about breathing for a while until I again fall off the wagon.
I brought this up because it illustrates the annectotal evidence making for bad assumptions. I have never been hit with the headache on nitrox, but I do not do nitrox all that often, and when I do, I am conscience of everything about the gas and my breathing (cause I am trying to see if there is really any difference for the extra money). If i did the same on air, I also would never get the headache. So is it the nitrox, or is it my awareness that I am on nitrox?
That is why, absent a double blind test, we will never know.
Wayne