Quote:
Originally Posted by wet
perhaps better to say "evacuate excess CO2", otherwise people might again try to remove all CO2 (by hyperventilating). At surface normal aerobic breathing will remove excess CO2.
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Yes, I explained that above, but in this sentence I rather wrote about the heart rate, not breathing. Higher heart rate won't lead to removing all CO2. Higher heart rate after surfacing is the natural body reaction after the end of the diving response and has definitely positive effect. Evacuating CO2 and other metabolism products from body tissues is part of it. Sure, as you correctly point out, hyperventilation would lower the CO2 levels not only in lungs, but in the blood and tissue too, but I hope that was already sufficiently explained. Though, you are certainly right, David, to emphasize it again.
So as for the heart rate - trying to artificially decrease your heart rate on the surface (for example through breathing techniques as suggested above) may be counterproductive - after surfacing as well as immediately before the new immersion high heart rate may be quite desired. Though again trying to rise it artificially for example by physical effort would be counterproductive, because it would increase the O2 consumption as well. Moderate level of stress may work well for this purpose, as well as for the fast and deep diving response.
