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There is obviously some merrit in your idea 1. Better pumping ability will definatly improve perfusion 2. Improved circulation in the athlete increases performance more by increased red blood cells ( which do the work of carring O2) which are present because of physical conditioning. than the increased pumping. And the athletes ability to deliver this blood all over the body. though one helps the other. 3. you keep using O2 transport ability which is excellent in an athlete, to predict the transfer of inert gasses while diving. One is vastly diffrent than the other. 4. Fatty tissues are repositories for inert gas.. But might they not actually increase safety by giving the ineret gas a place to reside safely while the body continues to out gas after a dive. The slowing affects of fat actually throteling the departure of inert gas from the body PREVENTING DCS. 5. the pressure gradient is what drives inert gas movement. This gradient would be the same in fit or fat diver. 6. Optimum exchange rate is not what I meant. Look at the bucket example again. time is part of the equation. Time can not be made up for with greater blood flow. There is a certain amount of dwell time needed by the blood to dump inert gas. Inertgas is not handeled like O2. The exchange will continue in the fit guy as fast as the fat guy whose blood moves slower, but not any faster. 7. The human body was not designed to on & off gas inert gases. It was made to on & ioff gas only 2 things O2 & Co2. an athlete will excell at this way beyond a fat guy. But this advantage will not necessarily apply to diving. The mechanisims in our body that allow us to handle inert gas is not built into our bodies, but is an adaptation our bodies make when subjected to diving. can not the fat guy adapt as well as the fit one ?? 8. As you said chamber testing is the best way to prove this. But imperical experience alone shows that it is unlikely to be proved to any great extent. If your theory WAS true. Fat unfit divers would be turning up everyday bent like pretzels. This is not the case. They may be a little more abundant than fit bent pretzels, but not much. You also must take into account many other factors when looking at # of bent fat guys. 8A. how many ubfit divers are out there VRS. fit ones. 8B. How many dives are beeing done by them. in my area the faties out number the Georges 5 to one easy. so of course everthing else being equal We will show up bent more often 8C. Other factors relative to fitness affect getting bent. Hydration, athletes are much more aware of this and stay better hydrated. 8D. fatigue, Us fat guys get exhausted just loading our crap on the boat. The fit guys are not even sweating. Fatigue leads to DCS. 8E. Nutrition. Proper nutrition allows the body to do anything more effeciently. The fit guy is much more likely to have good nutritional habits, giving him a further advantage 8F. The fit guy is more likely to have a positive adittude on life. We know that the mind is a powerefull thing. we can often think ourselves sick or well. Again the fit guy has the advantage. 9. I have participated in a Doppler experiment. I belive the physician was Mike Emmerman. The study took place durring a Doria trip. We were all diving Air using the US Navy Extreme exposure tables. While we had in water O2 for decompression we had no knowlege or tables to use it correctly. This was before the availability of computer programs & trimix (1986) For repetative dives there were no actual tables (the extreme exposure tables were for one dive a day) so we interpolated a table using the extreme exposure tables as a GUIDE. we did two or three dives a day. The Doc would dople us right after the dive & twice more at set intervals. The Doc puplished a paper afterward. Basicaly he found that he was not able to predict with any certainty who would have "silent" asymptomatic bubbles, & who would not. He did detyect bubles in some of us durring the three day trip. I am 5''7" and weighed 310 pounds at that time. Doc looked at me & figured I got his guy. He's gonna bubble like pot of pasta !!. Not so !! Doc only found bubles after one of my dives (one buble per four beats) and a BP of 130 over 65. After talking to him aboiut my decompression. I slowed my acent rate off the bottom & added two deeper stops. No bubbling after that. While one guy does not a study make, he found similar results among us all. 10. In spite of all of these advantages about which I belive we would both agree upon, Us fat guys still continue to dive and do well. We are like the Bumble Bees, which according to engineers should not be able to fly, because of their wing area to weight ratio ( not unlike O2 uptake to weight ratio). But since a Bee can not read & hence is unaware of the fact he can not fly, continues to do so DAILY, in the face of science. Bye for now I need some honey for my tummy Captain Zero (a fat guy) -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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