Picking Your Brain
Posted By Paul Kotik on 10 July 2006
If only I had one of those gizmos at home ! Ralph is in the know, but his colleagues were shocked by what they witnessed. One told me that under normal circumstances, the images he saw and the vital signs readouts accompanying them would have thrown the hospital into a full-out emergency response.
The medical community has been surprised by previously unknown adaptive responses in human apnea divers, homeostatic programming which enables us to dive far deeper and longer than traditionally thought possible.
Dr. Potkin points out another thing that surprises the academics - the common knowledge ( in the freediving community) that the dive reflex is conditioned. Learned, and teach-able, too. Kirk Krack, for example, has shown ( over more than 1,000 clinic students) that ‘naïve’ (i.e., completely inexperienced) students can quickly be trained to accomplish breath-holds that only a few years ago were the province of the sport’s elite.
The possibility that many, or most human beings have much more extensive apnea capabilities than previously thought - much better, in a sense, than are neccesary - goes back to the tantalizing Aquatic Ape Hypothesis. The threads are woven together.
Dr. Potkin’s three research areas address issues of considerable practical concern for freedivers. DCS used to be thought of as an issue for scuba divers, but Dr. Potkin’s Doppler measurements have made it clear that there is a real, though as yet unquantified exposure for apnea divers as well. As performance parameters increase and more freedivers dive deeper and longer this issue will very likely become of greater concern to more people.
Nor can one regard the prospect of neurological damage with equanimity – we need to know more, and the sooner the better.
Finally, chest squeeze is a problem which has put a goodly number of our friends and colleagues out of the freediving business temporarily or, in some cases, permanently. Dr. Potkin sees the state of our knowledge in this area as primitive. He concedes there is no decisive evidence for the origin of the blood components seen in freedivers’ sputum from time to time. What, exactly is it, where is it coming from and why? If there are ways to prevent or mitigate this class of barotrauma, it were better we knew and practiced them
Since the Potkin research has direct and immediate consequences for the survival, health and well-being of all freedivers, it seems to me we should be willing to share our experience and knowledge with the investigator. What we have is folklore – there’s a lot of good knowledge there, as the doctors acknowledge – but it’s not systematized and doubtless includes some bogus theorems and superstitions. We can teach science things it never knew about the human body, things that may well have prophylactic and even therapeutic implications way beyond the freediving scene. Science, in return, can help us put our knowledge in order, guiding us to safer practices and better performance.
There’s a way you can join in this effort and make a significant, immediate contribution. No, don’t grab you wallet, it’s not money that’s needed from you – it’s your experience and knowledge. Please take the time to visit the Potkin research website here.
The brain you pick may be your own.
- Bookmark with :
- what are these?
