Statics affected by water?

[tylerz]

It occurs to me that I have not seen much regarding the effects of water on the body, outside of the idea of the "mammalian diving reflex", and how this might affect statics.

My thought, springs out of the recognition that whenever we enter the water, we come out exhausted or feeling very tired/drowsy shortly afterwards. I have always accounted this to the fact that water can strip the heat off of our body quite efficiently, when we are not wearing a wet-suit. Therefore, our body is constantly working hard to keep us warm and replace that heat. I believe I have also come across an explanation previously as to why we need to urinate more frequently when in the water but I forget the explanation now?

Is anybody aware of other physiological effects?

Now the point I am looking to determine is that if we do statics then any such factors will begin affecting our performance in water, so maybe there are better practices to minimize negative effects.

Cheers,
Tyler

 

[Jason Billows]

Don't know how much validity there is to this, but I recall hearing that we absorb a surprisingly large amount of oxygen through our skin - essentially breathing through our skin.

I don't know if this oxygen goes directly to the blood stream or not, but could this affect statics? If you were to do your static with no wetsuit and your back exposed to the air, would it help?

Anyone have info on this?

Jason Billows
Ottawa, Canada

 

[Adrian]

Tyler,
There is an excellent article on DB called "Hydration and Diving" by Laura Harris that explains why we tend to urinate more frequently: http://www.deeperblue.net/article.php/373/32

It seems to ba a reaction of the body to compensate for the shift of fluids from the extremities to the core of the body. It's on the third page of the article in the section called "To Pee or not to Pee."

Adrian

 

[cdavis]

tylerz,

I also figured the tired feeling was due to heat loss, but now I'm not so sure. We recently dove a warm spring (about 88 degrees F). We were in for about 1.5 hours, no suit of course , and never felt even a little bit cold. I wasn't hot, but would have been if moving fast. Very low key diving. When we got out all of us commented on how RELAXED we felt, wasted might be a better term. All any of us wanted to do was vegetate in the sun for the next couple of hours. Hope this adds to your knowledge base.


Connor