Can your breath kill you at depth?

[superhornet59]

Hey all you scuba guys, i posted this in freediving but this seems partialy like a scuba question, so listen up.

if you go down very deep (say 300 feet) some gases will have bad effects, i cant remember specifics, all i know is certain gasses at enough compression will have adverse and possibly fatal effects. that said, we know there are none of those in our body as people have freedived and did not die of that, but what if you ate any paricular food, my example is mint. could the "mint gas" have realy bad effects and even fatal ones at depth (i mean that for freediving, not scuba) or any other food for that matter.

so summed up, can you get adverse effects at 300+ feet by eating some kinds of food?

 

[mps798]

as far as i know when free diving (that is your theoritical question)you breath on surface pressure , so this has nothing to do with breathing from a cylinder in a depth of 300 ft. When free diving that depth that means you use hyperventilation , the most common problem on breath is the shallow water blackout . (brain neutralised , from co2 -the ignition of body for breath - so it does not give signal of air needs , and when returning to surface at apprx 30 ft it gets sudently realise that co2 -which at this depth is getting double the size of what it was -is to much higher for giving the breath signal , so brain gets the black out and diver unconcious usually dies)
Now about scuba after a depth of 150 feets if i made the conversion correct it is a matter of time that every body can handle those gasses you mention , other can be infected in a flash and others in 40 minutes (max) ofcourse we are talking about natural air ( not tri mix , or, nitrox)
As about food , it is used not to eat before diving
also it is used not to eat "heavy" foods
And finaly about mint it is probably the body you are talking about to be alergic to mint and diving is just making the syptoms warst
forgive me for my english . hope i helped

 

[Bobco]

I would say that the main problem of eating below 100m is keeping the food on the plate, as it tends to float away, either that or the fish nab it on the way down.:hmm

 

[superhornet59]

lol thats not quite what i mean. im saying that yes certain gases will affect you in a deep dive, so can those gases affect you also while freeidiving? say carbon monoxide, you may have breathed it in from the boat exhaust, and now you freedive, can you die? when you freedive say... 330 feet, then the concentration increases by 10, the same would happen in a sbuba diver. the thing is if you have .1 grams of CO in your lungs, when freediving you still have .1 grams, its just more concentrated. is that how gases can kill you, through high amount (you could have 1 gram if you breathing scuba at 330. and it would be concentrated just like a freediver, there would just be more. so is it the amount or the concentration that affects your body?

now say it is concentration then can breathing small amounts of a gas (in the example CO, but substitute any substance you wish) kand you breath it in before your dive, once you reach depth will cause affects?

and by eating i mean before a dive, uness you spearfish and eat your fish on the spot lol. mint is only an example, but scuba or freediving, is there any such food that thrugh vapours could kill you? one such thing i would imagine might be alcohol. of course when scuba diving the concntration would be lower (think about it, same amount of alcohol, but way more air).

 

[naiad]

Carbon monoxide is definitely very dangerous for freediving. Breathing it in before a dive will have serious effects. A discussion about its effects here...
http://forums.deeperblue.net/forum102/thread63775.html

Alcohol is not a good idea for obvious reasons.

I don't think any food is that bad... :hmm

Lucia

 

[BatRay]

Can your breath kill you at depth?

Depends on how bad it is. *rimshot*

 

[MKDVR]

lol thats not quite what i mean. im saying that yes certain gases will affect you in a deep dive, so can those gases affect you also while freeidiving? say carbon monoxide, you may have breathed it in from the boat exhaust, and now you freedive, can you die? when you freedive say... 330 feet, then the concentration increases by 10, the same would happen in a sbuba diver. the thing is if you have .1 grams of CO in your lungs, when freediving you still have .1 grams, its just more concentrated. is that how gases can kill you, through high amount (you could have 1 gram if you breathing scuba at 330. and it would be concentrated just like a freediver, there would just be more. so is it the amount or the concentration that affects your body?

now say it is concentration then can breathing small amounts of a gas (in the example CO, but substitute any substance you wish) kand you breath it in before your dive, once you reach depth will cause affects?

and by eating i mean before a dive, uness you spearfish and eat your fish on the spot lol. mint is only an example, but scuba or freediving, is there any such food that thrugh vapours could kill you? one such thing i would imagine might be alcohol. of course when scuba diving the concntration would be lower (think about it, same amount of alcohol, but way more air).

Yes. No matter what your breathing, partial pressure increases the effect the deeper you go. The effect being narcosis, toxicity, or worse CO2.

 

[]-[@biT]

Each gas we breathe can have a negative effect on us as divers. As you go deeper the partial pressure of each gas increases and so to the effect it has on you as a diver.

Normal breathing air (scuba) (O2=21% and N2=78%)

N2 : responsible for nitrogen narcosis (in and around 27m)
O2 : oxygen toxicity (partial pressure of 1.4; ),
CO2: carbon dioxide poisoning (shallow breathing, cause stress and panic)
CO:Carbon monoxide binds haemoglobin 200 x faster than O2 (less haemoglobin to transport O2)

The last two I would say will have a larger impact on free diving.

Regarding food stuff… your problems start by eating food that causes gas (intestinal) to form while you are enjoying the deep blue. When you accent, that gas expand as pressure decreases… causing intestinal pain.

I don’t know about the mint though …