Coffee and Freediving - the reality

[hypoxiajunkie]

Well, my logic for cutting out salt is to lower my pulse rate and blood pressure in an effort to improve my dynamic times. There is lots of sodium in processed foods.

That being said, is there a consensus that a low salt diet is actually bad for free diving?

Any replies appreciated! Thanks!

 

[DeepThought]

I seldomly add salt to my food. That's how I'm used to, no health reasons. Am I missing something? (beside the salty taste...)

 

[efattah]

Cutting out salt causes chronic dehydration (decreased plasma volume), which increases your pulse and decreases your blood pressure. Decreased blood pressure causes early sambas and blackouts. Greater salt intake causes super-hydration (high plasma volume), which increases your blood pressure and decreases your pulse, and increased plasma volume also increases your CO2 buffering capacity because CO2 is soluble in water.

Salt is fine as long as you drink enough water to compensate for it. Eating lots of salt without drinking water also causes dehydration and negative effects.

Keep your sodium & potassium balanced, by eating enough salt & potassium rich foods, drink lots of water, and let your kidneys balance your electrolytes.


Eric Fattah
BC, Canada

 

[hypoxiajunkie]

Thank you for the knowledge about diet.

Interestingly, I don't usually get sambas. I think this is because I was making the mistake of exhaling during the last 20-30 meters (slow exhale, reverse packing) and thus blew off all the C02 during my dive. It seems to me, the samba is caused by C02 - or am I wrong?

 

[DeepThought]

Samba.

Samba is caused by O2 shortage just as blackout, and sometimes precedes it. I don't think that there's any worry of too much CO2 for shallow to medium depth diving.

 

[DeepThought]

Salt & potassium.

10x Eric.
I'm not on a law sodium diat. Just rarely add it.
I guess that the only way for me to know if my salt intake is optimal is to measure blood pressure now and after sometime when modifying my diat?
Any other way?

Excpet fruits, can anyone recommend me on some potassium rich foods? I try to eat apples now and then, but I'm not really a big fan of fruits.

 

[hypoxiajunkie]

Bananas, as I understand, have lots of potassium.

Try google?

 

[DeepThought]

I did mention no fruits.
Tried now.
Seems like apples are on the low-potassium list.
Potato is a no-fruit which is actually high in potassium, preffered baked.
Anyway, I looked at my last blood test, and I'm quite good on potassium and sodium:
potassium 4.7 where 3.6-5.0 is the healthy range
sodium 142 " 135-144

I am low on the range of alkaline-phosphatase though, I'll try to take a look at what that means.

 

[pburgess]

Michael, if you're not too keen on fruit try juicing. Sounds silly but for me juicing was an easy way for someone with years of not great eatign habits to get the quantities of fruit and veg in my system with minimal effort.

Fresh fruit and vegetables also contain a lot of enzymes needed for digestion. This means that the body doesn't have to manufacture as many enzymes. I find that not having undigested food slowly moving thru my gut greatly increases apnea ability.

 

[DeepThought]

Hmm, 10x, I'll try it sometime...
Thoug juicing will not make me love fruits much more..
It's something about the taste...
And if I choose to eat something sweet, it will usally not be a fruit, somehow their sweetness doesn't apeal to me.

 

[ramstam]

If I don't drink tea in the morning I just stumble around wondering
whats wrong the whole day. So it is very important to my diving, because it gets me out of the house.

 

[ramstam]

potassium rich foods? Try potatos.

 

[Paul Kotik]

DIURETIC

Somebody told me many fruit juices are diuretics - they cause you
to piss out more water than they supply.

If that is so, then in the interest of proper hydration we would
be wise to chase fruit juices with some volume of water.

 

[seagull]

www.whfoods.com is a great, if not complete, source of info (and I mean detailed info!) on lots of foods, how they are good for you, and recipes too.

And if you're worried about diuretic effects - drink some water!! It can be a hard habit to get into, drinking at least 2 litres a day, particularly if you are used to drinking coffee as well - you will be hitting the toilet ALL the time! - but it made a great positive difference for me.

That is also an important part of drinking lots of water (peeing often), because holding in can help to raise blood pressure due to the back pressure on the kidneys.

One other thing - fizzy mineral water was BAD for me - I got lots of mouth ulcers when I drank that regularly (I guess an upset PH level in my mouth). Tap water works just fine, though.

 

[pburgess]

Fruit juice should definitely be mixed with water and not guzzled. It's not "natural" to eat 4+ oranges in 30s flat which is what you're doing in you drink a juice quickly. Diueretic effects as mentioned plus even too much of a good thing can raise blood sugar levels too high.

 

[ramstam]

I need the diueretic effects because I drink way to much water.
6+ liters a day.

 

[aahunt03]

so, why does everyone say that freediving and coffee dont mix? I understand the dehydration part, and that it may raise your heart rate, but is there somthing else?

 

[skarz]

Coffee tastes like poo, maybe that's it

 

[commonerg]

I gave up coffee and sodas in early June. My RHR then was around 55. Since then, with continued training and an increasingly healthy diet, my RHR had dropped to 48 by July. I can't say for sure that the reduction of caffeine intake has had a beneficial effect on my freediving performance however. I stopped drinking caffeine just after becoming seriously interested in freediving. My static has improved from 3:30 to 5:10 in the same time, but I can't say that the caffeine cut had anything to do with my improvement.

As as side note, I was drinking, on average, a coffee and around three sodas a day.

 

[Pezman]

Coffee tastes like poo

Skarz,

You are wise beyond your years ... rofl

http://monkeyfilter.com/link.php/3188