Hi
Last year I decided to do something about a life long ambition to dive. I had had always had asthma, but the last attack I'd had was in 1979 and the regime I'm on kept it under such good control that I long sinced stopped bothering to carry a preventative inhaler. Unfortunately a comprehensive battery of tests discovered that my relatively low FEV1/FVC ratio was almost certainly 'airway remodelling' as the result of chronic childhood bronchitis and was effectively non reversible.
For this reason my local diving medical team would not clear me for SCUBA diving. As a result I decided to take up spearfishing and freediving and have finally started with the latter here in windy Orkney. My understanding was that, although there is a remote chance that air in your lungs could redistribute itself at depth and get trapped, for instance behind a mucous plug, the actual instances of this happening in real life are incredibly rare - I have actually only discovered one such instance in the literature. Even gas trapping events due to asthma are very rare, and serious harm/fatalities non existent to judge by nine years of BSAC incident reports.
I am willing to accept a higher degree of risk than a medically fit person in order to participate in a pastime that I love as long as the risk level is not worse than that of other 'risky' pastimes - for example I'd be happy with a 1:250,000 vs 1:500,000 increase in risk, but not a 1:100 vs 1:500,000 one. The problem I have is that to get any formal training therein I have to fill in forms that refer me back to a diving physicial. My local (and very helpful) diving physician stated that he was only qualified to ascertain fitness, according the the BSAC/BTS/UKSDMC guidelines for SCUBA diving - not freediving. How do I go about getting cleared for freediving? Are there specific medical requirements or do the various schools in the UK simply adopt the BSAC ones? If any of you have been in a similar situation I'd really like to hear your experiences.
Many thanks
Ferry Louper
Last year I decided to do something about a life long ambition to dive. I had had always had asthma, but the last attack I'd had was in 1979 and the regime I'm on kept it under such good control that I long sinced stopped bothering to carry a preventative inhaler. Unfortunately a comprehensive battery of tests discovered that my relatively low FEV1/FVC ratio was almost certainly 'airway remodelling' as the result of chronic childhood bronchitis and was effectively non reversible.
For this reason my local diving medical team would not clear me for SCUBA diving. As a result I decided to take up spearfishing and freediving and have finally started with the latter here in windy Orkney. My understanding was that, although there is a remote chance that air in your lungs could redistribute itself at depth and get trapped, for instance behind a mucous plug, the actual instances of this happening in real life are incredibly rare - I have actually only discovered one such instance in the literature. Even gas trapping events due to asthma are very rare, and serious harm/fatalities non existent to judge by nine years of BSAC incident reports.
I am willing to accept a higher degree of risk than a medically fit person in order to participate in a pastime that I love as long as the risk level is not worse than that of other 'risky' pastimes - for example I'd be happy with a 1:250,000 vs 1:500,000 increase in risk, but not a 1:100 vs 1:500,000 one. The problem I have is that to get any formal training therein I have to fill in forms that refer me back to a diving physicial. My local (and very helpful) diving physician stated that he was only qualified to ascertain fitness, according the the BSAC/BTS/UKSDMC guidelines for SCUBA diving - not freediving. How do I go about getting cleared for freediving? Are there specific medical requirements or do the various schools in the UK simply adopt the BSAC ones? If any of you have been in a similar situation I'd really like to hear your experiences.
Many thanks
Ferry Louper