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I guess since this is my area of expertise (headaches, not technical
diving!) I should say something.
As has been pointed out, exertional headaches are fairly common in
extreme sports. For many people, even recreational diving is a
relatively extreme form of exercise- I use up about the same number of
calories on a 1 hour shallow dive as I do on my daily 10K.
Again, as has been pointed out, ibuprofen is used by alot of divers to
prevent headaches and muscle aches on long technical dives. It is not
employed to mask DCS symptoms or symptoms of muscle strain, etc. It
should only be used in this way by someone who is in good enough shape
that they are not going to be masking something more dangerous. Real
DCS, even type I is not going to be covered up by simple ibuprofen.
However, as someone else already said, it MAY have some benefit in
reducing secondary inflammation that causes alot of the long term injury
from tiny bubbles.
A couple of caveats-
1) Before taking something like this to prevent headaches, you have to
make pretty bloody sure that you don't have something nasty causing
them. If you really want to be paranoid about it, just about any of the
horrors you can imagine- brain tumors, etc-can be the underlying cause
of an exertional headache. A trip to your local GP is the best first
step.
2) 800 mg every four hours of ibuprofen may do alot of injury to the
lining of the stomach. Most people who live the monastic life style of
the WKPP folks- no drinking, smoking, etc.- won't have a problem with
this. However, some people will get inflammation or bleeding of the
stomach lining from this much medication.
A last note- if you're taking ibuprofen for its anti inflammatory
effect, you're already covered for anti platelet effect- you don't
really need to take aspirin in addition.
Wendell Grogan
(a neurophysiologist)
"There are two kinds of people, those who do the work
and those who take the credit. Try to be in the
first group; there is less competition there."
(Indira Gandhi)
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