What will happen if you don\’t keep exhaling if u lose ur second stage regulator?
emster_is_1 asked:
I am gonna learn to scuba dive at Mermet Springs (Southern Illinois) this July and i was reading my OPEN WATER DIVER workbook and I saw that you shouldn’t hold ur breath and I was just wondering why? will ur lungs explode or sumthing?
I am gonna learn to scuba dive at Mermet Springs (Southern Illinois) this July and i was reading my OPEN WATER DIVER workbook and I saw that you shouldn’t hold ur breath and I was just wondering why? will ur lungs explode or sumthing?
As you will learn in your SCUBA class, if you ascend while holding your breath you could suffer a lung over expansion injury which can be fatal. Your lungs don’t ‘explode’, but air is forced into your tissues and blood stream which can cause an embolis that can cause a heart attack or stroke. That is why you are taught to aways exhale when the regulator is out of your mouth. You will also about how, due to the equal pressure of air in lungs at a given depth that you can indeed exhale all the way to the surface and still have plenty of air in your lungs. This is known as an emmergency swimming ascent.
Kind of, there are a few things that can happen that are caused by you holding your breath on ascent. I’m about to go in depth here so if you get bored just remember that its bad to hold your breath on ascent but scuba diving is really easy so don’t be at all frightened by it, you will have plenty of practice and people to show you if you take classes. ok here we go.
On ascent the pressure on your body is dramatically reduced causing the air in your lungs/blood to expand. By holding your breath you can cause your lungs to “pop” for lack of a better word. This is called a pneumothorax.
A pneumothorax is a one time escape of air from your lungs into the plural lining (i believe that is the name). Anyway, this is relatively harmless and will usually get better from breathing 100% Oxygen on surface, but it will definately put you out of diving for a bit. But, there is something called a “tension” pneumothorax. This is when the hole in the lung acts as a valve and when you breath in the air escapes but when you breath out the air remains trapped. This is very dangerous and requires IMMEDIATE emergency assistance.
So, now on to the big enemy of divers. AGE. AGE stands for arterial gas embolism. AGE is basically when you come up too fast, cough on ascent, or attempt to valsalva on ascent. AGE is air from a ruptured alveolar sac getting stuck in your veins/arteries. This air can move into your brain, spine, heart, or just stay where it is and cause extreme damage. The big number for AGE is 10 minutes. Usually, the symptoms of AGE will show up within the first 10 minutes on surface but have shown up a few minutes later than that.
Anyway, there are a few more things like mediastinal emphysema or subcutaneous emphysema that can happen to you but they are in not considered a “life threatening” diver casualty, and they are basically just an air excape from the lungs. Sooooo, hope this helped, if you need anymore info just look to wikipedia, im sure that will help, or the us navy dive manual, revision 5.
Hope this doesnt frighten you, I have been diving professionally for years and have never experienced any diving related casualties. Just pay attention and have fun.
Good luck!!!
Your lungs will be damaged silly! The book should have told you that…