breath holding + smoke?

[XyseR]

i know your lugs get messed up with smoking...but let's say if i only smoked once a week? does smoking effect your lung capacity or something? someone skool me :t

 

[Dan Man]

I've never smoked and don't intend to ever but from what I have heard from smoking spearos they said once they gave the habbit up they found themselves diver deeper & having a much better breathe hold.

 

[foxfish]

Hi Xyser, I dont think you will get many positive responses to your question. The good thing is, it is a new year so I suggest you join me & give up completely. I gave up about 5 years ago & although never a heavy smoker I have found it a lot easier to maintain a general level of fitness. Good luck Mart.

 

[RydDragyn]

Having known many people who have died of lung cancer, I would say don't smoke for any reason, and stay away from second hand smoke as well. Being able to hold your breath underwater is trivial compared to an early death.

 

[Pastor]

I always find this one an interesting question. Obviously smoking is bad for you but I believe some of the best freedivers do or used to smoke, or so someone mentioned here a while back. I used to smoke but I definitely feel better for having given up. One of the old forum staff here could hold her breath for over 5 minutes when she smoked but it went downhill when she gave up. I often wonder if smoking increases your tollerence to CO2? I have no idea.

 

[SanderP]

I doubt it does much harm to your breath holding if you smoke 1 cigarette per week.

But of course it's better not to smoke at all.

 

[demasoni]

I used to smoke for 3 years and gave it up cold turkey...but that was when I smoked like 10 cigarettes per day. What do you smoke once a week? If its a cigarette, one a week seems pretty easy to give up.

I find that since I've stopped smoking - its been 3 years with no intentions to go back - my general health and level of fitness, both mental and physical have greatly improved.

 

[XyseR]

i don't smoke cigarette, it's another substance - use your brain. i guess the stereotypically smoker is fat, lazy, can't hardly catch his/her breath, which i'm none of those. kind of interesting that smoking could increase you c02 tolerance...or something? maybe just in their mind.

 

[trux]

Although non-smoker, I am quite tolerant toward both tobacco and marijuana smokers, but I definitely think that mixing smoking with freediving is not good, and that is regardless whether you smoke tobacco, marijuana, aromatic herbs or perhaps carpet.

Although according to the document Effect of cigarette smoking on basal and carbon dioxide stimulated cerebral blood flow in man, tobacco smoking does
not interfere with the cerebral vascular response to increased arterial pCO₂, it speaks about immediate effects, not long-term effects of inhaling smoke. It is known that heavy smokers are not only exposed to elevated CO₂ levels during smoking, but also normally due mechanical and physiological changes on lungs, so I guess their tolerance should be higher too, however on my mind it is rather counterproductive for freediving and may lead rather to easier blackout than higher performance. Even if there were any advantage of higher CO₂ tolerance, the negative effects of smoking on lungs and the organism will largely wipe it away.

Besides it, chemicals contained both in tobacco and marijuana very strongly interact with different chemoreceptors in our organism and strongly influence its functions. Their effects on cardiovascular and neural systems are known and well documented. Both nicotine and THC act as or interact strongly with vasoconstrictors, and hence also impact the natural diving reflexes.

This document claims that smoking marijuana has respiratory depressive effects and (unlike in the above mentioned similar document about tobacco effects) that it influences the CO₂ respiratory response and that even in long term.

Very interesting article about respiratory effects of smoking marijuana is available here. It discusses different and sometimes contradicting studies, but I think it is worth of reading if you are a regular marijuana smoker and freediver caring about the health of your lungs in the same time.

 

[sanso]

AFAIK, marijuana contains less tar to clot Your lungs - so that is good. And if one has to smoke, marijuana is definitely more worthwhile. Smoking tobacco seems quite pointless to me, since it doesn't really do much apart from the above mentioned lung-clotting and all the other negative things.
Smoking carpet has a certain coolness I imagine - but somehow I don't feel the urge to try.. :t

Just my two cents..

 

[trux]

AFAIK, marijuana contains less tar to clot Your lungs - so that is good.

That's the usual argument of marijuana smokers, but it is based only on abstracted facts about selected aspects of smoking. The reality is different and much more complex. Have you looked at the document I linked above?
Marijuana Research: The Effects of Marijuana Smoke
It speaks exactly about this - about health effects of marijuana smoking and the comparison with tobacco smoking. Yes, of course, I am aware that the laws criminalizing cannabis and protecting tobacco productions were always based on economical interests and not at all on any scientific facts, and that there are big money behind it till today, so that one has to be very careful about any researches done both on tobacco and marijuana, but most of the facts the article presents, give very good sense, and I do not think they are far from the truth.

They tell about the research:

The author's basic hypothesis is that marijuana smoke, like tobacco smoke, is harmful to the lungs, and that exposure of the lungs to both marijuana and tobacco smoke is even worse. Their findings in this and subsequent studies provide no reason to reject this hypothesis. The public wants to know if marijuana smoking is more or less dangerous for the lungs than tobacco smoking. If one were to insist on a simple answer, that answer would be this: any smoke is damaging to the lungs, and continued exposure to smoke will likely cause lung cancer. However if the public insists on using tobacco smoke as a reference, Tashkin's research demonstrates that describing marijuana smoke in reference to tobacco smoke is complicated. On a simple numerical scale, in some areas marijuana produces higher indices of risk than tobacco, and in other areas, a lower indication of risk. The conclusion of this 1987 study is as follows.

And as for the tar you mentioned, be sure to have a look for example at this paragraph:

"[M]arijuana smoking resulted in a tar burden to the respiratory tract that was 3.5 to 4.5 times greater than that produced by tobacco smoking in the same subjects. Furthermore, smoking a single marijuana cigarette caused a fourfold greater increment in carboxyhemoglobin saturation than did smoking a single tobacco cigarette."(8)

 

[fcallagy]

i think in an earlier thread eric fattah mentioned a smoker with a pretty impressive breathhold but who would not be able to repeat the performance for a long while after doing it.

 

[DeepThought]

I don't think it should affect your breatholding in any apparent way unless you're a full time apneist. But I suggest you won't dive under the effect or even a day after, your body and your perception of it might be off and that can be a safety issue.
I hope you don't mix tobacco, that's a truly evil drug.

 

[trux]

I don't think it should affect your breatholding in any apparent way unless you're a full time apneist. But I suggest you won't dive under the effect or even a day after, your body and your perception of it might be off and that can be a safety issue.
I hope you don't mix tobacco, that's a truly evil drug.

Good advise! What is full time apneist, BTW? One who holds his/her breath 24 hours a day? Just kidding, I know what you mean and more or less agree, unless you are heavy and/or regular smoker of cannabis - I think that there may be then rather important physiological changes. And smoking the day of or before the diving can indeed seriously increase the risk - not only because it messes with ventilation and cardiovascular functionality, but also because THC has effect on perception of time, so you may get hypoxic before you realize it is time to surface.

 

[SanderP]

This whole topic made me wonder about waterpipe.
I've read that the water filters the smoke and thus makes it less harmful (and logically it SHOULD be like that), but at the same many say it's as dangerous as regular cigarettes.

Can anyone comment on that?

 

[trux]

It seems to be an urban legend. At least according to this document:

http://www.silink.ca/desktopmodules/DCom.eLibrary/LinkClick.aspx?tabid=79&table=eL_Resources&field=ResourceID&id=11838&link=Water%20Pipes.pdf

Some people falsely believe the water filters out toxins such as carbon dioxide and tar. They also tend to think the fruit that is sometimes added to tobacco makes the mix a healthier choice. And, since water pipe smoke is less irritating on the throat, some smokers mistakenly feel it must be less harmful than cigarette smoke. Many of these misconceptions about water pipe smoke come from advertising campaigns intended to boost tobacco sales.​

In a similar way, cannabis users are surrounded by misleading information about bong use. Many smokers believe that using a bong is healthier than smoking a joint. They incorrectly assume that the most harmful substances in cannabis are filtered out through the water. In addition, they perceive bong smoking to be less harmful because the water cools down the smoke, making it less irritating on the throat. Some bong smokers end up smoking more than joint smokers because it’s easier on the throat, thereby increasing their exposure to harmful toxins rather than reducing it.​

 

[demasoni]

What about using a vaporizer? Like this one:

What is the BC Vaporizer?

 

[trux]

Yes, that seems to be less unhealthy than smoking, at least as for the combustion byproducts goes:

Cannabis Vaporizer Study

 

[foxfish]

High dudes!

 

[podge]

High dudes!

Foxy great reply….rofl
I little bit of what’s bad for you won’t do to much harm!