Apnea Diet

[alix.leclerc]

So on my shopping list i'm looking to buy citric acid power, L-Theanine and sodium nitrate... maybe it could be mixed into one giant milkshake?

Fish

Eating fish thins your blood and reduces your bleeding time (time it takes to form a scab) Will this be good for freediving? I'm thinking that it will make it easy for the blood to flow around your body and make it easier for your heart to do what it does best. I also think thats why your supposed to drink a lot of water?

What do you think?

...i'm off for a swim.

[cigarlung]

Years ago I read that Sodium nitrate was a possible cancer causing agent I know it is in lots of lunch meat and bacon as to help maintain shelf life. I have changed my diet only to lower my cholesteral have not noted any performance change positive or negitive. Please buy Alaska salmon,shrimp, crab, halibut, black cod, guey ducks, herring row and help my poor impovershed freinds in Petersburg.

[alix.leclerc]

I ran out of mackrel and salmon last night... I need fish and have no money!
Damn I need to get a spear gun... and somewhere where the visiblily is more than 20cm...

[penguinator]

Originally Posted by cigarlung

Years ago I read that Sodium nitrate was a possible cancer causing agent

What doesn't give you cancer these days?

This was a very interesting thread to revive from ages past, thanks for a good read!


Ps: About the US study on hotdogs..... Americans will try anything to justify their (hotdogs) existence

[Cliff Etzel]

Tomorrow I'm heading to the Newport Aquarium for a full day video shoot of a local freediver who is volunteering at the Aquarium. I will be spending a good portion of the day in the water with him shooting video while freediving and haven't a clue what foods to consume tonight and during the day tomorrow?

Water temps are said to be in the low 50's F in the aquarium tanks and I want to maintain my energy level throughout the day. I have been training on land with a modified first series Ashtanga Yoga/Pilates routine 6 days a week with occasional pool sessions just to keep wet as well as Static Apnea tables once a week.

My diet consists of whole grains, rice, lean meats, fish, olive oil, lots of leafy greens, no sugar (replaced that with Stevia), decaf coffee with Soy creamer is my only vice. I cut dairy out last month and caffeine two months ago. I also Jala Neti twice a day to keep my sinuses/ears in shape with gentle equalization to keep me Eustachian tubes exercised.

Any advice on foods to take with me to keep my energy level up for what looks to be a exhausting day of freediving with a fairly large video housing with full lighting?

[shoutatthesky]

Hey Cliff - sounds like fun work. I would suggest bananas above all else. Maybe you could also add in a few sunflower and pumpkin seeds. These are great because you can just eat a small amount at a time. Even better is toast a mixture of the seeds in a heavy fry pan with a bit of soy sauce or tamari to give the mix a bit more flavour. So basically lots of snacks and nothing bigger than a few mouthfulls. Have fun!

[alix.leclerc]

Hang on... can you ask him how he manages to volunteer for swimming around in a great big tank with a lot of amazing fish? It's a perfect dive!

I've heard that you should eat carbs the night before so that you don't run out of energy, and don't eat three hours before the dive. Only eat fruit and fast sugars the day of the dive since they are quickly digestable. No alcohol the night before either! (although i've heard a small amount justy before the dive works wonders?)

[diveoceanos]

I am writing a course outline for free diving, and during my search for information on nutrition for free divers I came across this thread. I have read a lot of interesting things on the above discussion and frankly some of them created a wow effect as they came in conflict with what I was knowing. As far as I remember myself I was always looking for a proof to buy an information. My background is School of Health Sciences - department of Pharmacy in Patras Greece. I have the sense that a lot of the information in this thread are inexact science or the interpretations some of the pals are offering are at least incomplete.

Just to clear up a few things I would like to invite every1 to read some chapters about the regulation of body fluids pH in a Human Physiology textbook, like the one of A Guyton MD.

The bottom line is that the human body and specifically the chemosensitive area of the breathing control center in the brain develops adapatation to progressively lower pH in a way that the onset of contractions regulated by the breathing control center is delayed in well trained individuals compared with beginners. This phenomenon is well established and known among the free diving community as the development of tolerance to higher CO2 with training. But gee, one may not affect his or her blood pH more effectivelly by eating anything than by regulating it with respiration!

The normal pH of arterial blood is 7,4 and the normal pH for venous blood is 7,35. Even the slightest change in these values may alter the rate of biochemical reactions that occur inside our cells. Therefore the human body possess many effective mechanisms and buffer systems in order to maintain its pH within relatively close limits. Otherwise it would be a disaster.

These mechanisms which I am not intending to elaborate on include buffer systems that are present in all body fluids (bicarbonate system, phosphate system, protein system), control by increasing or decreasing the respiration rate, and finally the most effective system is the renal system that produces either alkaline or acidic urine accordingly to maintain the body pH within the close normal values.

The minimum you can achieve by eating acidic foods and overdo it is to achieve a pathologic state called "metabolic acidosis" where the blood pH goes below 7,35. Whether that contributes to the development of faster adaptation to more acidic blood and thus delay in the initial contactions during apnea remains to be proved. Also whether one may affect its fluid pH by eating lemons before apnea towards a more alkaline one and thus delay the onset of the first contraction is doubtful and remains to be proved by proper research. As far as the supplements are concerned please be aware that the most of the time the so called claimed "miraclelous phenomena" by their marketing campaigns are purely hoax. The theories about the source of human desease are numerous. Some of them are take the cake though like the one of attributing every bad thing to body pH. For your information there are bacteria than can leave in very acidic environment and some that can leave in alcohol or they can develop resistance to human body defenses. Don't tell me than cancer can be cured by controlling ones pH. To make the long story short, IMO nothing can increase your fitness significantly more than a balanced diet, weight control, a healthy lifestyle and a lot of excercise. The rest is philology!

But what is all this discussion about? What creates that much interest in altering ones pH by applying all these tricks, anyway? You probably know that on repetitive exposure to apnea conditions your chemosensitive area of the breathing control center in your brain becomes less sensitive to H3O+. The higher the concentration of H3O+ the less is the pH (which is BTW a negative logarithm of H3O+ ions concentration). During apnea or breath-hold the CO2 concentration increases in the body fluids and then it reacts with water to give H3O+ and HCO3- (bicarbonate). Progressively the body adopts to gradually higher levels of H3O+ and the onset of the first contraction is being delayed making apnea less troublesome. One more thing that you might need to know about pH is that as it drops it might reach the zone of 7.0, under which condition the CNS is supressed so much that the individual looses conciousness. The mechanisms are far much more complicated as I am describing them right here but just to give you an other point of view.

[alix.leclerc]

It's always good to get information like this! Have you also looked into the Bohr effect concerning the pH of the blood and oxygen affinity? Go on Wikipedia or there is a little bit about it on this thread http://forums.deeperblue.net/freediv...uman-body.html. Basically if the blood is more acidic oxygen binds to haemoglobin with less affinity and so it is more easy to transport around the body, and easily deposited to the muscles that need it. Which is important in breath-holding where the blood becomes slightly more acidic due to the increasing levels of saturated carbon dioxide.

Now I have to go make some tea...

[shoutatthesky]

Well this is all very interesting.
@Oceanos - You obviously have a wealth of knowledge in the area of biochemistry and physiology but please remember that science must always be willing to accept it has come to a wrong conclusion and be willing to adjust accordingly. I wonder if you might be the person to take these theories and test them out with some experiments. Then you can say "this is wrong" or "this is right". Thankyou for your imput also to Alix's essay. I learned from what you had to say.

@ the dairy industry - Shame on you! I hereby declare my permanent withdrawal as a customer.

@ Alix - No milk, two sugars please.

[diveoceanos]

Originally Posted by shoutatthesky

Well this is all very interesting.
@Oceanos - You obviously have a wealth of knowledge in the area of biochemistry and physiology but please remember that science must always be willing to accept it has come to a wrong conclusion and be willing to adjust accordingly.

very true.

Originally Posted by shoutatthesky

I wonder if you might be the person to take these theories and test them out with some experiments. Then you can say "this is wrong" or "this is right".

It is not easy to test an hypothesis. I have no access to any research facility.

A lot of people though have personal experience of various experiments that they did. Their observations are very important. They should be feeded to a research facility.

One other point is that research in freediving physiology if it is to be carried out properly it should be done in freedivers volunteers. The body of a freediver depending on how adapted it is, might behave slightly different than the average body of any volunteer.

[cigarlung]

DIET changes have a powerful effect if you have reached a plateau in training. Perhaps are nutrician and training are excellent already however we have reached a point in training where we just are not improving and so we find special new foods or supplements that others claim will improve are performance. We beleive this person with this product or special diet has the answer the power of belief has a powerful effect on are increased performance.

[efattah]

diveoceanos,

Having done experiments with apnea diet since 1999, I can make some statements based on personal experiments as well as confirmation from many other freedivers.

Modifying diet does little or nothing to change your blood pH, but it can change the amount of buffers in your blood.

The simplest experiment that anyone can do, is to:
1. Try doing a breath-hold and measure the time of the first contraction
2. Mix 15g of baking soda (NaHCO3) into water and drink
3. Wait 45 minutes
4. Try another breath-hold and measure the time of the first contraction

The contraction will be dramatically delayed. You can then do a control experiment:
1. Try doing a breath-hold and measure the time of the first contraction
2. Drink water
3. Wait 45 minutes
4. Try another breath-hold and measure the time of the first contraction

Compare the results. It will be extremely obvious. This is not a method designed just for freediving -- sprinters and middle distance runners have been doing it for years.

[GreekDiver]

Im just going to swallow my baking soda toothpaste in the morning before i go diving.

[diveoceanos]

Originally Posted by efattah

diveoceanos,

Having done experiments with apnea diet since 1999, I can make some statements based on personal experiments as well as confirmation from many other freedivers.

Modifying diet does little or nothing to change your blood pH, but it can change the amount of buffers in your blood.

The simplest experiment that anyone can do, is to:
1. Try doing a breath-hold and measure the time of the first contraction
2. Mix 15g of baking soda (NaHCO3) into water and drink
3. Wait 45 minutes
4. Try another breath-hold and measure the time of the first contraction

The contraction will be dramatically delayed. You can then do a control experiment:
1. Try doing a breath-hold and measure the time of the first contraction
2. Drink water
3. Wait 45 minutes
4. Try another breath-hold and measure the time of the first contraction

Compare the results. It will be extremely obvious. This is not a method designed just for freediving -- sprinters and middle distance runners have been doing it for years.

Eric,

That's all very interesting. I am sure you are aware about Hamish's experiment testing this hypothesis using NaHCO3 and NaCl in the control. Recently it has been published in the journal of Hyperbaric Medicine as well 2007 Mar-Apr;34(2):91-7. One thing I would like to have your opinion in, is the following:

The experiement carried out in non-elite breath-hold divers with Breath-hold times around 2:30 on average. They have compared the Maximium breath hold time (max-BHT) and reached statistically significant differences with NaHCO3 which found to increase the max-BHT by around 15% or 22 seconds (P=0.019), over NaCl. I assume that NaHCO3 increases the buffering capabilities of the plasma and thus we have a scavenger effect of the produced CO2, and the drop in pH is delayed, just like you described above.

In the abstract it is not mentioned that they measured the time to first contraction. But I assume that this was also increased in the NaHCO3 group.

In your opinion if the same experiement was carried out in elite breath-hold divers would the results be different? My question is about differentiating the time to first contraction with the max BHT. I am asking that, because as the body develops higher levels of adaptation the max-BHT is more dependent on oxygen levels rather than CO2. On the other hand contractions are increasing the utilisation of oxygen. Any data on the max-BHT in elite BH-divers?

Sotos Christodoulou