"Early" contractions & lung squeeze

Hi all,

I have been here on DB since a little while now though I did not post any message yet.
I would like to share with you the experience I am going through as I do not really know how I should handle things now. Maybe some of you have encountered the same problem and have managed to solve it.
Sorry in advance for the lenght of this message, but I would like to describe things precisely. Hope you will have the patience to read !

I have been freediving for 3 years now, and I am mainly a "pool freediver". I train once to twice a week (dynamics). My personnal bests are 100m DYN bi-fins & mono in a 25m pool and 5' STA. I also train once to twice a month in a pool tank (20m max depth).

6 months ago, I took a week vacation to practice CWT. Before this week, I did not practice too much at depth though I reached 26m and 29m at two or three occasions.

During this training week, I improved gradually from 25m to 36m. My progression was stopped by difficulties to compensate beginning from 33m (mainly due to a lack of relaxation). I realized I needed some time to digest my new sensations, relaxation during free fall, etc... I always surfaced very clear. O2 was not my limitating factor. During this week I also practiced some breathing exercices in order to improve my preparation before immersion.

Begining from the 2nd day of training, I started to feel some kind of lung irritation (in the upper part) which I kept all the week (with intensity growing). I did not feel real difficulty to breath though but I tried not to push to much on full inhale (especially during breath-ups) as I could feel a burning effect if so.
This bad feeling did not stop me from improving my depth during the week.

Things began to hurt my mind the day after my last training day when I noticed some blood in my spit. It was not a huge amount, but still it was there and I immediatly thought about some kind of lung squeeze. I also made the correlation with my "lung irritation"...
What surprised me is that I started to feel this "irritation" on my 2nd day when I only performed some dives to 25m max which I already made by the past without any problem. Also, it was not a depth I had in mind when talking about lung squeezes (I thought I would be more likely to encounter this kind of risk at depth where my lung reach the VR).
Also, it came back to my mind that when surfacing from 1 or 2 dives in the beginning of the week, I had some caughing (but I don't know if my spit contained some blood at that time as I did not imagine any kind of accident at that time and did not pay attention to it).

Back home, I did not urge myself to see a doctor as I breathed normally. Only this irritation sensation was still there. I slowed my earger to go back to training and took some rest. The feeling took at least 6 weeks to smooth, and I decided then that it was stupid not to see a physician ; it would at least help to explain (maybe) what the situation really was.

The physician I saw made also the hypothesis of a lung squeeze though he made the necessay analysis to check it was not a lung desease or so. I saw a generalist physician, a lung specialist, and a cardio physician specialist in diving physiology. I have gone through lung radiography, lung scanner, analysis of electrocardiogram under effort + heart echography !

Conclusions from the lung specialist : no trace of lung injury (though I still could have gone through a squeeze : as I made the exam 1.5 months after the incident, blood had time to evacuate)
My heart have been described as in very good shape : very good physical condition, no anomaly.
Conclusion of the cardio physician was that it might not have been a lung squeeze as generally symptoms are more severe (heavy dyspnea, noticeable caughing, etc...). His hypothesis was that I probably had some kind of bronchitis worsened by breathing exercices (air was a bit dusty as well) and repeated breath-ups, and that all this coupled with several immersion + compensation difficulties probably created severe irritation which have lead to some traces of blood in my spit : maybe some capillaries have been damaged this way.

I accepted this explanation which was compatible with what I felt.

Last week-end, I went diving in a lake with friends to practice again some CWT. There was no depth objective and I decided to take it smoothly. I made a few dives to 5 and 10m to warm myself and then we headed for a 20m bottom. I made 3 dives at this depth and started to feel again a (small) "irritation" in the upper part of the lungs. This time I paid clear attention to my breathing and eventual caughing, but nothing. I Could breath clear, no trace of mucus feeling in the lungs. So I was convinced the irriation explanation was correct and thought that it could be explained by immersion (chest compression) + maybe chest contractions (as I felt I had several ones under water).

We then decided to go on a 30m bottom to extend eventually our depth. I deciced to prepare myself with a free immersion dive to 10m with 1 min static at the bottom. I made a 3-4 min breath-up prior to it and made the dive which lasted 1'50". I came up feeling very good. Of course still the same feeling in the upper lungs. However I paid greater attention to my contractions during the dive and noticed I had a big one already at 5m (after only 10 or 15sec dive) followed by smaller ones. It had some kind of destabilizing effect on the psychological side but I noticed that once I managed to accept this first big contraction (which is going through all the chest, not only the diaphragm), then the following ones were softer and I could accept them and then relax to do my static in good condition.
I made a second dive with the same protocol. Same feelings, though I felt the contraction was even more destabilizing (probably as I paid greater attention to it than I am used to).

I then made the conclusion that my "irritation" was probably due to these contraction.

I then headed for a CWT 30m dive after a 3/4 minute breath-up. This time I had a big contraction at around 12m followed by softer ones ; it was very noticeable. I evacuated it mentally, relaxed myself and entered in free fall for the last 10m ; I was feeling very good. During ascent, I noticed again some contractions in the chest. I surfaced very clear and happy from my feelings at the bottom.


I stopped there my progression and went back home realizing that I really needed to understand why these "early" contractions which might be one of the main causes of this irritation feeling in my chest.
But it became even more clear (and frightening) the day after, at wake up : once again some traces of blood in my spit...! Very little (2mm² spots or so), but still it showed that there have been some capilaries broken. So now, I feel it really is a "mild" lung squeeze as I don't think it could be done by the irritation itself which was softer and made in one day only compared to the fist time.

I feel somehow that it is the consequence of the ambiant pressure on the chest on one side, and the probable big negative pressure inside the chest created by the contractions + I suppose a complex hemodynamic context.


Now I don't really know what to do. I don't really understand I could encounter this problem so easily whereas I am in apparent very good physical condition. Depth were relatively shallow, I cannot see significant additionnal risk factors that could help the incident to happen (i.e. very cold water => unusual vasoconstriction, heavy stress, ...).
As you can imagine, I feel very frustrated...

Are there some of you who had the same kind of experience ?
And also, are there also some of you feeling early contractions like this ; I assume they are not caused by CO2 at this time of the dive...

Thanks in advance for your feedback !

Bonjour & thank you all for your replies !

I will go through the thread link given by Trux in details. Ol Dirty Diver case is not exactly the same but advices certainly still apply the same way.
Working on my chest flexibility as well as putting a step back, and going little steps by little steps should be the good starting point.

To answer Trux's question, I do not pack, so I rejected hypotheses related to overpressure coming from air expansion. I feel it rather comes form this contraction issue causing direct injury or big negative intra thoracic pressure.

I did not think about the "cough" hypothesis but it can be a good track. I would say that it really looks like a cough but I don't feel it coming from the throat. However the power is nearly the same. My feeling is that it is more a "chest spasm" rather than a contraction. I really feel that my rib cage muscles need to contract to contain the spasm. It is rather "disturbing" on the mental side, much more than CO2 contraction which I am used to deal with to a certain point when doing 25m or 50m hypercapnic pool series.
Usually this spasm/contraction lasts 1 to 2 seconds (I feel it quite long), the same kind of feeling in the chest than when you sneeze nose and mouth closed but without the pressure feeling in the throat and upper airways.
The strange thing compared to other cases I read is that I don't feel fluid or mucus in my lungs nor rales when breathing during the dive session. I only feel irritation (at the end of inhale). I only see some traces of blood the day after in the morning after wake up when I manage to spit some mucus which might have been formed during the night. Maybe this blood is coming from a trauma rather than alveoli rupture.
The others days after the indident, I feel I have to evacuate something from my lungs but it is very sporadic.

Do you know about a description of a trachea squeeze somewhere ? I would be interested to compare it to my feeling & symptoms. I am not quite sure how it may feel. In my case, if I breath in the lower part of my lungs, I will not really feel the pain (except overall irritation). But if I perform a full inhale and breathhold, then I will feel it very clear (irritation feeling increasing) and it will remain very sensitive for many minutes after. The thing is that it is located in the upper lungs or upper bronch but I do not feel pain in the trachea itself (or at its base depending of how long we consider the trachea).

Maybe that at immersion, the water pressure on my upper chest creates a cough or spasm reflex causing high intrathoracic pressure causing a barotrauma somewhere in the upper bronch and lower trachea.
humm, investigation is moving forward

cdavis said:

Hi Renard, welcome to DB and yes, there is at least one other diver out there with very similar symptoms, me. Same lack of extreme "squeeze" symptoms, same long recovery period, very similar feeling in the chest although mine feels like the tale end of a bad chest cold, same getting cumulatively worse. I never saw any blood, but otherwise you sound just like me. Mine was brought on by overenthusiastic exhale diving, see the thread, "Exhale diving for the average diver" I had the same impression that a tense diaphragm, straining to equalize, tense chest, etc, was contributing to the problem.

I think there is something out there that is not well understood and hasn't been described, that we both experienced, something between a classic squeeze and pulmonary edema. Maybe somebody else with similar symptoms will chime in.

I beat mine by very very very (blaaa) slowly extending the amount of exhale in a pool and doing almost all exhale diving at very slowly increasing depths. Went too fast a lot, but when I finally slowed down enough, I'm pretty sure I was seeing physiological changes in my lung tissue that adapted it to increasing depth and pressure. I'm now doing reverse pack exhales in a 4 m pool with a ridiculous number of reverse pacs and laying on the bottom a while with no symptoms whatever. Pretty sure you can beat your problem with the same approach.

On your contractions, I am not much help. There is a class of early contractions that comes from overexciting the stretch receptors in your diaphram. Causes sometimes hugh contractions, chest heaving and other weird symptoms. I hit these the first time I went below 70 ft, very disconcerting. As far as I know, these only show up as you approach or exceed RV, so should not be related to yours, but who knows.

Good luck and keep us posted.

Connor

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It is very good to know that you have been able to overcome your problem or at least push the limits this way !!
Reverse pack exhale at 4m.... humm... alreay big pressure there. Would be curious to know how much you have you been able to extend your depth on full inhale (from the time you had your problems and now)

jome said:

Not saying this is directly applicable to diving or your case spesificly, but as a general idea I think a lot of people keep hitting their head in the wall, unwilling to take a step back to go forward because it's hard not to when your limits are not in apnea for example and you know you could go twice the depth without this one problem. Be it the knee keeping you from doing a marathon when your other physiological parameters are well in there, or a lung squeeze keeping you from going deep when you have an excellent pool condition, perfect gear and technique and good dive site close to you But sometimes, that's exactly what it takes.

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Thanks for your example and advice. I feel your are right and I think it is certainly very rewarding to overcome oneself difficulties this way, keeping courage, patience and confidence. Sometimes things are not as simple as we would like them to be. Maybe that is where challenge is.