Working In An Underwater Lab

I am a scientist in human physiology. I study how the body works in extremes of environments. I lived on mountains and underwater. I slept outdoors in snow to study cold adaptation. I spun pilots in centrifuges until their faces looked like shar pei puppies. I make grown men cry.

Readers asked for stories of when I lived the extremes myself.


Here is a story when I worked and lived in an underwater lab.

I didn't have a camera then, and have few photos from those years, so at right is a photo of an underwater lab found on the Internet using a search of the terms "underwater lab."

You live many meters underwater in a metal structure that keeps out the water. It is an air pocket the size of a big room and the air you breathe is under pressure equal to the surrounding water depth. Since you live there for days, or weeks, the lab has a kitchen. Cooking and using the bathroom in the higher pressure is for another story.

To get to the lab you need to dive down underwater. You can wear scuba gear or use a long surface supplied hose. Occasionally a reporter would come visit the facility and want to stay in the underwater lab for a day to get a story. We, the staff, would teach them enough to use the air supply safely to get them down and back up after their stay, and transport their sometimes large and unwieldy suitcases for them in watertight containers.

One day, another staff member and I helped a reporter dive down to the lab, helped her inside, all nice and dry, and left here there to set up her typewriter (this was a long time ago before laptops and wireless devices). We returned to the surface and put the air hoses away. Shortly later, we decided to free dive back down to check on her.

We took a deep breath, held our breath and dived
down down down

We thumped on the big tempered glass portholes trying to get her attention.

thump thump!
(holding breath)

thump thump thump!
(holding breath longer)

thump!
longer... oooooooh!

She noticed us. She was delighted to see two mer-people swimming in the blue depths outside. She waived at us gaily. We hovered swimming weightlessly outside in the blue, holding our breath.

She raised her two hands, making a camera gesture.
She clicked a finger in air and then pointed it to tell us - "Wait!"

Through the porthole we watched her pawing around for her suitcase to find her camera.
(still holding our breath, outside in the deep blue water)

She looked and looked. She scattered clothes and bags.

The other staff and I used a swallowing technique to extend breath-hold time -uuuuuuuuuuuMH

Finally, a camera waved at the view port.

She positioned the camera to take our photo.

(Still holding our breath waiting, waiting).

She held up the camera .... She leaned back, ... She stopped and oriented the camera the other way, ..... She leaned to the side

She gestured WAIT!! She gestured, "I have to get it just right! Just a moment longer just WAIT."


She got the photo. We saw the flash bounce off the glass, knowing the photo would never come out. She didn't seem fazed.

She held up one finger and pantomimed through the glass - "Wait - one more!"





Related Fun Fitness Fixer:

• Living Under The Sea (includes the exploding toilet story)
• The Mermaid Stories
• How To Stay Underwater For A Month
  
• Indiana Jones Rocket Sled
• Space Walks
• Extending The Envelope - Military and Civilian
• Do Military Chants Help Running? - The Jody Calls

Random Fun Fitness Fixer:

• FDA Orders Suicide Risk Warning for Common Back Pain and Migraine Drugs, and Others

Labels: aerospace, breath-hold diving, cold, hyperbaric, military fitness, scuba, swimming

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91 Year Old Water Skier

Edith McAllister was born in 1918 and lives in San Antonio. Here is a video of her water skiing at the age of 91.

Ms. McAllister swims and water-skis every day. She says the key is you have to keep going, don't quit.

My father was also an avid water skier. I have photos of him slalom-skiing, long silver hair flying. In water-ski vocabulary, "slalom" means only one ski. I also have a photo of him high diving from the Mexican cliffs with the real cliff divers - for another story. I have photos of my grandmother lifting weights in her 90's with her hip-length hair still black, but she said she doesn't like the photos because she looks old.

Stay active, no matter what your age. It is the key to being mobile and independent

Related Fun Fitness Fixer:

• 91 Year Old Decides to Run and Sets Record
• 91 Year Old Keeps Moving With Drumming
• Bodybuilding Champion Age 74 - Tsutomu Tosaka
• Exercise and Aging - Don't Limit the Patient to Limit the Pain
• What I Learned at the Aging Conference
• Healthy Aging Starts Now

Random Fun Fitness Fixer:

• Simulation Suit To Feel the Pain of Osteoarthritis

Labels: aging, spirit, swimming, video/movie, waterskiing

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Are You Always Colder With Exercise In Cold Water?

It is winter in the northern hemisphere. Outdoor swimming and boating waters range from chilly to frozen. A widespread assumption is that exercise in cold water always makes you colder. Some scuba diving textbooks assert that cold water will cause heat loss and therefore you will always chill in cold water. Some survival protocols may say you must never try to swim to safety if you find yourself unexpectedly in cold water. Are these true?

Although you lose a high amount of body heat to moving water, it is also true that you gain heat from being alive and from moving. The more heat you can generate, the more it is likely to meet or exceed the amount you lose. Losing heat by itself does not mean that you are chilling. If you generate more than you lose, you do not chill, you can stay warm when swimming and diving, even overheat. If not, of course, you can get very cold.

In general, it is easier to chill than overheat in cold water. However, in some cases, you can generate enough heat through exercise to match or surpass the heat you lose, even moreso if you are well insulated with muscle and fat. Swimmers doing laps in pools and divers sweating into their masks during hard finning against currents can tell you that. During Desert Storm, some divers in the Persian Gulf needed to wear ice vests for heat extraction to prevent overheating.


Many factors are involved including your fitness (ability to exercise hard enough to make enough heat), your build, your clothing, medicines you may be taking, how far it is to safety, your health, how warm you were when you started, the weather, water current and conditions. You can have net loss and gain back and forth during the same swim. Much to know.

When I competed in swimming, we swam miles each day. In winter, after finishing pool training, I walked home, hair still dripping. A fun thing was to see how fast it would freeze. When I'd pat the top of my head, the frozen hair crackled humorously. You could hold locks out to freeze in shapes. Teammates and I experimented informally, running various speeds to see if the wind froze the hair more or our rising body heat could melt it. Some of us were able to generate a literal head of steam. Most of my training was pool swimming (wimpy) but I have tried ice swimming in no more than a bathing suit. My family were Russian Ice swimmers and my Grandfather was the oldest member of the Iceberg club, who swam in the ocean every day, including New Year's Day. I am trying to find any photos that may have been taken. I know the club and my Grandfather were pictured in an issue of Strength and Health magazine.

In my military work in cold survival, we used computer models to compare heat loss in critically cold water scenarios for downed pilots and combat swimmers, to our real experiments putting volunteers in cold water with lots of forced convection - waves, wind, overhead spray, and my little toy wind-up sharks and penguins. You can become incapacitated by cold before becoming hypothermic. You can die from cold incapacitation in the water without ever reaching a hypothermic state. In informal conversation, the terms hypothermia and chilling are often used interchangeably, but that is not correct, and they are not the same. I made t-shirts for "my guys" the military volunteers in each extreme experimental protocol. The cold immersion trial shirts were inspired by the verse "Many are called but few are chosen" to become, "Many are cold but few are frozen."

More On Surviving Cold:

• Sixteen Miles of Cold Water
• Getting Fitter in 50 Degrees
• Beware of Hype in Training Methods
• Do You Lose Most Of Your Heat Through Your Head?
• Swimming and Pulmonary Edema Part I
• Japanese Ama Divers - Cold, Clothing, and Children

Healthy Swimming and Scuba:

• Diver Down Flags - Boating, Swimming, SCUBA Safer and Smarter
• Better Stretches for Swimming - Cook Strait Update
• Lower Back Pain From Swimming and SCUBA
• Nutrition for Endurance Swim Training

Random Fitness Fixer:

• Inspiring Update from Jill - Celiac, Knees, Fasciitis, and Restoring Happy Life

Labels: cold, military fitness, myths, scuba, swimming

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Diver Down Flags - Boating, Swimming, SCUBA Safer and Smarter

My father, some of my brothers, and I loved swimming together in a cold river in the northern United States. We enjoyed fun discussions treading water at the turn-around points. One day, a speedboat left the boating lanes and came at us. I stared dumbly at the fast-approaching boat, because why would anyone run right over you when he could plainly see you? Everyone knew that people swim in the water. The prow churned the water right over us. We corkscrewed underwater like five clams in a row snapping shut, to clear the propellers. It is an acoustics fact that words attempted underwater are distorted. Humor columnist Dave Barry once wrote that anything said underwater sounds like "b-mmoogle" but Dad's blue stream was pretty clear through the roil of bubbles

We listened underwater until the propeller sound deepened, showing it was going away. We surfaced, and looked, and saw the boat turn around and head straight back for us. I thought it might be checking if we were all right, but Dad pushed all our heads back under. The boat smashed the water directly overhead again. Maybe the boat came to "finish us" but with the benefit of the doubt, maybe he just wasn't looking where we he was going again.

We dodged trouble. We are divers and have and use diver down flags. Boats not observing them is another problem. Every year, boats hit swimmers and scuba divers, and injure, disfigure, dismember, and kill them. Know your flags and prevent tragedies:

The Diver Down flag has a red background with diagonal white bar. It is notice to boaters that scuba divers are in the area and to keep clear. It was designed in the late 1950's so that boaters would not suddenly find themselves running over divers surfacing in their path. The "Diver-Down Flag" may be attached to a floating surface buoy and dragged around by a diving group if they will be ranging far from the entry point, or used as a stationary line for descents and ascents. It may also be flown by a boat used for divers. Some states prohibit flying the diver-down flag if divers are not in the water at the time. In that case, the dive boat will (is supposed to) raise the flag during dive activity then lower after all divers and swimmers are back onboard

Labels: injury, scuba, swimming

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Diving Women of Korea - The Haenyeo

In the previous two weeks, I wrote about the Japanese diving women, the Ama. Readers asked about the divers of Korea. Although they are sometimes called Ama divers, "ama" is a Japanese word. The Korean diving women are the Hae-nyao. Both ama and haenyao mean "sea woman." The Korean divers are also called Jamsoo, or diving lady, and Jam-nyao, or diving woman.

The diving women are a respected profession of hard work to gather food for their communities. The work is difficult and cold. The numbers of both Ama and Haenyao are decreasing every year, as the daughters who would take their mother's roles go to other work in the cities.

The first recorded Korean diving (that I know of) is from the 400's A.D. around the Chechu (Jeju) Island area. It is likely that diving had gone on centuries before that. The Haenyao historically dived all year (even in winter), and without assistance of weights or ropes to ascend or descend. They made as many as 30 dives an hour, to depths from 10 to 30 meters, at temperatures in the winter as low as 10 C.


Diving clothes varied by geographic area, with some divers wearing only a rope belt or loincloth. No fins were used to help swimming. Later when wet suits were developed, only male divers wore them. Women were prohibited protective suits by their cooperatives, since they were considered more cold tolerant to begin with, and the advantage of the suit would "accelerate over-harvesting" Later, the work became pretty much exclusive to women.

Taking many large breaths before a breath hold extends time because "overbreathing" lowers carbon dioxide in the body. Carbon dioxide signals you to breathe, so it is protective to have it build and make you want to return to the surface before you go unconscious from lack of oxygen. Hyperventilating (too many large breaths) before a dive can cause a drowning accident. The haenyao and ama practice a short hyperventilation with a distinctive whistling maneuver which was studied to find why it may not cause the problems of hyperventilation without the maneuver.

To call them "The haenyao women divers" is redundant. The word haenyao already refers to the female. I asked them what the males were called and the Haenyao laughed at me, saying that males cannot withstand the hard work or the cold, and it is known that women do better in the cold. Dr Suk Ki Hong, one of the best known researchers of immersion and the haenyao and Ama divers wrote, "The shivering threshold is elevated as compared to men, and thus women are distinctly in a better position than men to work in cold water. Undoubtedly there could be many other reasons. However these facts lead us to postulate that men could not compete successfully by virtue of their poor tolerance to cold."

Sadly, Western sport divers started writing articles and presenting lectures at dive conferences in the 1990s, mistakenly claiming women did not have better cold tolerance and had greater risk of cold injury. The myth was repeated in diving magazines, scuba classes, and textbooks of the era.

Are there male indigenous divers? Yes. I will write of them and their stories in the future. Stay tuned.

Link to haenyao museum site


Previously:

• Diving With the Japanese Ama Divers
• Japanese Ama Divers - Cold, Clothing, and Children
• The AmaSan Japanese Diving Women
• The Mermaid Stories

Related Undersea Stories:

• Living Under The Sea
• Nutrition for Endurance Swim Training
• Hyperbaric and Aquatic Medicine On Travel
• Train Exercise is Exercise Training
• Three Common Swimming and SCUBA Myths in the News Again
• Diver Down Flags - Boating, Swimming, SCUBA Safer and Smarter
• Exercise and Fitness in Decompression Sickness Risk
• Helium Speech - An Astronaut Calls the President of the United States
  
  

Labels: breath-hold diving, cold, myths, squat, swimming

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The Mermaid Stories

"Are you a real mermaid?" asked 6-year-old Claire. Readers have been asking about skin and scuba diving, training for triathlon swims and breath hold diving, getting in shape for beach lifeguarding, science of swimming, Navy undersea maneuvers, and many aquatic adventures. Then, at a gathering I attended, the young granddaughter of a friend asked a question.

For the next two weeks or so, I will post Fitness Fixer answers to some of these from the road to teach at the Wilderness Medical conference in Colorado USA. Here is the first story.

It was her birthday. She wore a mermaid costume, and held her gifts of assorted mermaid dolls and toys. Claire loved mermaids. My mother, a Russian circus teacher, came to her party as a surprise and was teaching everyone to juggle scarves. Through the moving scarves, looking like sea waves, one of the mothers pointed my way and said, "Claire, look, that's the lady who lived under the sea - she's a mermaid!"

Claire edged over. She asked, "Are you a REAL mermaid?"

I thought before answering: I had devoted years of research career studying the human body diving deep underwater. I had lived days at a time inside research chambers simulating high and low pressure conditions. I had lived in actual undersea vessels on the sea floor called habitats. I helped test and pilot small submarines. But these were living in air pockets, breathing air. I thought a bit more. I had been a competition swimmer, training 5-7 miles every day, but that was in a pool. The longest I swam at once was 20 miles. Not as much as I imagined a real mermaid could easily swim. I had done open water swims across lakes and in rivers and harbors. I did ice swimming in winter. But that is still just swimming. I am a scuba instructor, who taught students and led trips far underwater. I had my scuba students and dive trip participants dress in costumes and sports clothes and we did underwater tennis, ballroom dancing, drove pedal cars and bicycles underwater, held umbrellas, and did underwater karate. But still, we breathed air from tanks or surface supply hoses, or did long breath hold dives from the surface. I worked with one of the greats in diving medicine who had worked developing liquid breathing long before the movie "The Abyss." I had put myself through school lifeguarding and teaching swimming at a city pool. I had guarded beachfronts, and competed in lifeguard contests, running the beach in a small red swimsuit and red rescue tube, body-paddling a rescue board over crashing waves to dive down and lift a human to the surface like stories of sea-dolphins, or maybe mermaids, buoying drowning sailors. I had lived in Japan and got to study the legendary diving women, spending long deep dives in hazy green cool waters, appearing briefly at the surface with seaweed decorating my long hair. I ate algae and sweet sea grasses. I love the water. I feel at home in the water. Then I spoke, "No."

Claire crinkled her small nose and stomped away. "NOT a REAL mermaid!"

I turned to my friend and asked, "Should I have lied to your child?" She said, "Tell the real stories."


Coming Next - The AmaSan Japanese Diving Women

Previous Mermaid Stories:

• Living Under The Sea
• Nutrition for Endurance Swim Training
• Hyperbaric and Aquatic Medicine On Travel
• Train Exercise is Exercise Training
• Three Common Swimming and SCUBA Myths in the News Again

Next Two Weeks:

• Get Certified, Learn With Fitness Fixer Personally In Colorado USA in July

Stories of Previous Year's Journeys to this Conference:

• The Coming Two Weeks
• Fitness Fixer Index

Labels: breath-hold diving, hyperbaric, movie/media fitness, scuba, swimming

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Ironman Triathlon

This is fun - this article is the 600th Fitness Fixer post.


Yesterday's post started a series on Triathlons. Triathlon races of different names, organizing bodies, and distances are held year-round. The Ironman is a trademarked name of one particular triathlon and its qualifying races.

The Ironman Triathlon is a long-distance race of a 2.4 mile swim (3.86 km), 112 mile (180.25 km) bike, and a marathon run of 26 miles 385 yards (42.195 km), continuously, in that order.

Fifteen men competed in the first Ironman triathlon in 1978. Then, it was a known "Fitness Fact" that women could not do hard athletics. Several sports of the time banned women. Magazine articles appeared regularly that women had special problems that made doing athletics more dangerous and less possible. Scuba magazines printed (and reprinted) bizarre myths by reporters, that women were physically predisposed to injury from heat, cold, exercise, and decompression. Even chapters in medical books had separate "woman sports" chapters with "proofs" such as shorter legs and less testosterone and blood volume. Currently, teen Asian girls are beating the times of big Western men from that era. Injury rates are shown to be not from gender as much as training. I am a former anatomy and physiology professor. Don't try to snow an anatomy professor about joint angles and limb length as proof of athletic prowess or injury. Future posts will dissect these myths from a physiology basis.

The name "Ironman" and related "Iron" labels are official property of the World Triathlon Corporation (WTC). The WTC hosts other triathlons around the world that are called Ironman. Who owns what name seems to change, and can get confusing. Several events formerly called Ironman no longer use the word due to aggressive trademark protection. Readers can comment to keep us current.

The Hawaii Ironman Triathlon (various alternate names) hosts the Ironman world championship and owns the race held each fall in Hawai'i. Last year's 2008 Hawai'i Ironman drew over 1700 athletes. The 2009 Hawaii Ironman will be held October 10, 2009. Qualifying races required for eligibility are held throughout the year. Several qualifiers are going on right now, this June and July.


Next - Ironman Triathlon Qualifiers for 2009+

More - Click the label Ironman, below, for all articles on the Ironman, and each label, swimming, biking, running, and others for all Fitness Fixer on each topic.

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Read success stories of Fitness Fixer methods and send your own.
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions.

Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail" (under trumpet) upper right.
See Dr. Bookspan's Books. See class schedules, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.

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Ironman Finisher by Jeff Kastner

Labels: biking, ironman, myths, running, swimming, triathlon

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Triathlon

This week - a fun series with a post each day about triathlons.

A triathlon is usually a race, where each competitor swims, bikes, and runs one continuous effort. The first person to finish all three is considered the course time-winner. The order is often swim first, then bike, then run, although order can change depending on the length and kind of course, and opinions of the officiating body.

Some triathlons are relays. One person enters each part, for example the first person swims, then their teammate continues the run. A race consisting of a run, bike, then run again is considered a duathlon, even though the competitors do three parts. "Run-bike" and other duathlons will be covered in future posts, as will summer and winter biathlons.

The first modern triathlon was possibly a race in 1920 or so, in France, called "Les Trois Sports" (the three sports). Within that decade, several more three-event races of various distances and names followed.

In the 1980s, different big triathlons became more popular - including the several Ironman distance races and comparable races, called full triathlon and long distance, by other organizations. The "Ironman" brand and name is highly protected and can't be used by anyone else, a topic for another post. These are usually 3800 m swim (2.4 miles), 180 km bike (112 mi), and 42.2 km run (26.2 mi). In 2005, the World Triathlon Corporation started the Ironman 70.3, also known as a Half Ironman.

Triathlon became an Olympic event at the Sydney Games in 2000. Olympic Distance is considered a short triathlon - 1500 m swim (0.93 mi), 40 km bike, (24.8 mi), 10 km run (6.2 mi). The Olympic Triathlon is about half the bike and run distance, and a slightly shorter swim, of what is usually called a half-triathlon.

The many other triathlon events can vary in length and level of organization, depending what is available to the organizers. Distances may conform to standardized organizational rules, or vary with whatever length the available course allows. A kids' summer camp may use their pool or lake and a dirt road, track, or field nearby. A town may organize their waterways or harbor and roads. Sometimes the world comes together to host international events.

In some smaller-scale races, participants can show up on race day, sign up, and go. Larger races require registration and briefings before race day. Big triathlons require qualifying times in previous races and large entrance fees.

Coming Next - Ironman.


Related:

Swim
Sixteen Miles of Cold Water
Swimming and Pulmonary Edema Part I
Swimming and Pulmonary Edema Part II
Better Stretches for Swimming - Cook Strait Update
Nutrition for Endurance Swim Training

Bike
14,000 Miles on a Bike - Herniating and Fixing Discs
Stronger Pain-Free Wrists When Biking
Freed From Pain, He Rides Again
Tour De France 2008 and Increasing Aerobic Capacity

Run
Prevent Main Factor in Back Pain After Running and Walking
Do Military Chants Help Running? - The Jody Calls
Fast Fitness - Run Faster
Does Running Ruin Your Joints?
Spotting Back Pain During Running and Walking - What Do Abs Have To Do With It?

Labels: aerobic, biathlon/duathlon, biking, endurance, Olympics, running, speed, swimming, triathlon

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Extending The Envelope - Military and Civilian

When I worked as a military research scientist, strong brave men got hazardous duty pay to spend a day with me.

I measured what humans can do, physically and mentally, and how to make them better at it. I tested pilots undergoing acceleration to see what determined susceptibility or resilience to blackouts and other g-force effects. I tested combat swimmers to see what makes them swim faster, farther. I worked on modalities to prevent astronauts' bones from de-mineralizing, because without the pull of gravity, muscles do not make the bones retain calcium. After weeks in space, astronauts return with the equivalent of years of bone loss. I worked on countermeasures. I tested ground troops to see how much they could carry and why.

My work trains the person, making him self-contained and able to withstand harsh conditions without special clothing, tools, or pills. Another department works with garments that help resistance against temperature, weaponry, and other effects. Another group are the 'gadget guys' making yet more things I have to make the guys able to carry around. Another department is pharma-chemicals - what drugs they could develop and administer to block need for sleep and food, heighten focus, or increase strength or speed. Some heart drugs are long-known and used for steadying the marksman's hand by decreasing the contractile pulse of the heart.

Click the labels under this article for more Fitness Fixer on each topic. I have written several posts, with more to come, on my work to "extend the human envelope."

• Look for tomorrow's post for one of the things the pharmaceutical groups work on - Neutropeptide Y Generation for Healthier Stress Response.
• More in Extremes, Survival, Injuries, Faster Higher Stronger - Fitness Fixer

Labels: aerospace, drugs, g-force, military fitness, performance enhancing modality, stress, swimming, tests of fitness/health

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Happy New Year 2009

Today is the first day of the Shinto New Year (Gantan-Sai) and the Western New Year on the Gregorian calendar, the solar calendar used in much of the world, reorganized by Pope Gregory XIII in the (solar calendar year) 1582.

One New Year tradition, of many, occurs in the freezing waters off Coney Island New York. For many years, my Grandfather was the oldest member of the Brooklyn Icebergs, a swimming club who swims in the ocean every day of the year, no matter what weather or temperature, including New Year's Day when air and water temperatures are often below zero centigrade, and sometimes Fahrenheit.

I will post more on the fun and physiology of cold swimming in months to come.

On the New Year, it is another tradition for people look forward and back at their lives and make plans for things to change. The two-headed Roman god Janus symbolizes and names the first month of the year.

To help your New Years resolutions:

• Household Fitness in the New Year
• New Years Resolutions for Fitness Successes - Reader Hall Of Fame
  
• New Year's Resolutions Made Easy
• New Year's Resolutions
• If Better Abdominal Muscles Are Your New Year's Resolution, Try This
• Is Your Drinking Hurting Your Neck?
• Holiday reminder - Fast Fitness - Prevent Death and Disfigurement, Save Lives and Property

The Mahayana New Year will be Jan 11 and Lunar New Year will be January 26
The Baha'i and Persian/Zoroastrian New Year's Day will fall on the Vernal Equinox on March 21.

Happy New Year To All.

Labels: cold, holiday, swimming

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Subjects Invited for Immersion Pulmonary Edema Study

Duke University contacted me regarding Swimming and Pulmonary Edema.

They are recruiting experimental subjects who have experienced immersion pulmonary edema to participate in studies to investigate causes of this condition. The studies concentrate on effects of cold-water facial and body immersion on pulmonary arterial pressure and pulmonary arterial wedge pressure. It will also analyze subjects' DNA to see if people who have experienced immersion pulmonary edema (IPE) may have a genetic predisposition.

DNA Analysis Study
Subjects over 18 years old who have experienced immersion pulmonary edema are needed to donate a small amount of blood for this DNA analysis. This will involve one blood draw and a review of past medical records. Subjects will be paid $50 for participation in this part of the study.

Immersion and Exercise Study
A small group of subjects will be studied more extensively to investigate the effect of cold water immersion on pulmonary arterial and pulmonary arterial wedge pressures. Subjects will exercise underwater on a cycle ergometer (bicycle) modified for use in a pool inside a hyperbaric chamber. Subjects will be monitored with arterial and pulmonary artery catheters.

Subjects must come to the laboratory about 3 hours before the immersion and exercise study for a physical exam, an exercise test, orientation, and scheduling for the experimental day. The experimental day (about 8 hours) takes place at least three days later.

Subjects involved in the immersion and exercise part of the study will be paid up to $350 for participation.

Subjects undergoing immersion and exercise must be 18-40 years of age, physically fit (regularly exercise at least twice a week), and have no physical impairment that would prevent them from participation.

Immersion Pulmonary Edema
Immersion pulmonary edema is a sudden accumulation of excessive fluid in the lung air spaces during swimming or diving. It is characterized by cough, shortness of breath, decreased blood oxygen levels, and coughing up blood. This condition has caused death. Its cause is unknown, but it can occur in swimmers and divers who are usually young and healthy, including military recruits. It may occur in swimmers or divers who have experienced similar conditions before without any problems.

To Participate Contact:
For more information, please contact Dionne Peacher at IPEdivestudy@notes.duke.edu or 919-668-0001.


Related Related Fitness Fixer:

• Swimming and Pulmonary Edema Part I
• Swimming and Pulmonary Edema Part II
• Sinus and Head Colds
• Regular Exercise Reduces Cold and Flu Incidence
• Sixteen Miles of Cold Water
  
  

Labels: education, pulmonary edema/oedema, scuba, swimming

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Olympic Calories for Michael Phelps and Everyone Else

I didn't intend to cover this topic until several reporters deluged me in one week. They said I must answer immediately because they had deadlines, gave specifics I must answer so they can be paid for their article (while I supply everything with no remuneration), hours I must contact them at my expense, perhaps without them knowing my time zone placing it in the middle of the night, and so on.

Two reporters seemed to want the usual myths, not corrections or understanding. In numerous interviews, I earnestly debunked urban legends and explained facts, then found their article quoting my name wasn't anything I said. With apologies to readers waiting patiently for earlier topics, here are some of the questions:

1. The reporters wanted a comment that it was uncommon or abnormal that Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps eats up to 10,000 calories a day when training. It is not a mystery. If athletes train hard over many miles, they need more calories.


2. It is not unusual to eat large quantities of food and calories, athlete or not. Eating a great deal is nearly customary in the West, certainly in the US. Many people eat many thousands of calories a day more than they burn, and so, gain weight. The only trick seems to be to get people to stop eating that much.


3. The reporters asked what special techniques are needed to get that many calories. None. Look around restaurants and grocery lines. A typical fast food entrée, with French fries and milkshake can total 5000 calories in only one meal. A "salad-bar" with dressings, sauces, and usual Western choices can start at 1000-2000 calories a plate full and go upward from there. A bag of crisps, chips, or nuts can total 1000 calories in one snack. Exercisers and dieters lulled by slick advertising add hundreds of calories with sports shakes and bars. Ordinary people can eat thousands of calories per meal that they really don't know about, plus snacks. It is not a math mystery that they eat thousands of calories per day, and have extra body weight, regardless of other personal factors.


4. Another question was what made Phelps burn such an unusual number. It is not unusual for a swimmer or other endurance athlete to burn thousands of calories. When I trained swimming for various competitions I ate between eight and ten thousand calories a day myself, swimming five to seven miles a day. I posted about the mileage in Last October in Fast Fitness - Healthier Sports Shake.


5. Two reporters asked me to confirm an item from a National Public Radio interview, that once Phelps (or anyone) stops exercise, the body stops feeling hungry, therefore, someone not exercising will eat less. Clearly, this isn't so. People can eat too much regardless of exercise. You are not a cause-and-effect automaton. Food choices and overeating habits can occur separately from exercise habits. Days I didn't swim twice a day, miles at a time, I had to remind myself not to eat the same as when training. Now that I don't train like that, I can't eat like that. It is not increased age but that I do less. No mystery.


6. No it is not hard for most Westerners to eat - they just buy the food. No special eating techniques are needed. Overeating and eating when not hungry are common. One cup of nuts is about 800 calories. I can stuff about half a cup in a brimming handful. My husband Paul, a hard working carpenter who is taller and more muscular than Phelps, but about as lanky, fits almost a cup in his giant hand. We may scoop a handful while commuting on bike to work. Other people may eat handful after handful while watching television, totaling many thousands of extra calories a week.


7. It is not true that Phelps is "pure muscle" and no one is. Hopefully they have bones, and brains, and lungs, and some skin and so on.


8. It is not true that only muscle burns calories, or gender is the deciding factor. All your cells that are alive need to breathe and eat in various amounts, male or female. That is why a fat person, male or female, uses more calories everyday to feed all the extra. A fatter person may need more calories to stay at that higher weight than a smaller muscular person, male or female. Weight loss occurs when they do not eat enough to feed it all. Add a small amount of exercise over the day to do functional daily movement. See the lifestyle links at the end for more.


9. Resting metabolic rate is not mysterious, or fixed by gender or age. A car in idle uses gas, and people also burn calories even at rest with no exercise. Just like different size cars get different mileage, so do we. Adding suitcases in a car trunk needs more gas to tote them around, even though suitcases are not motive parts. A small to average adult may burn about 75 calories an hour, depending on size, to fuel all the cells to stay alive. Over 24 hours that is about 1800 calories a day. A smaller person may need less. A larger person may need 100 an hour or 2400 a day. When you exercise you use more.
   

There were more questions, taking me days to write. Until then, click these:

• Is Your Health Food Unhealthful?
• Metabolism - How to Lose Weight and Save Money
• Lose weight through lifestyle - What is "Fitness as a Lifestyle?" and How Often Should You Be Healthy? and Bending Right is Fitness as a Lifestyle.
  
• For more on swimming and nutrition for hard endurance exercise click the label "swimming" under this post, or use the Fitness Fixer Index.

Labels: myths, nutrition, Olympics, swimming, weight loss

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Olympic Fast Friday

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - learn some Chinese for the Olympics.

The Olympic ceremonies start at 8:08 p.m. on the 8th day of the 8th month in 2008. Eight is an auspicious number for the Chinese. Whether you agree or disagree with politics in the world, use learning about someone's language as a step to peace:

First lessons include "bei" - north, and "jing" - a capital city. Then you see that Beijing means Northern capital.

Here is some Olympic Chinese:

• Click labels below for posts on each topic.
• Find posts on your favorite topics: Click and bookmark the new Fitness Fixer Index.

Labels: fast fitness, mind, Olympics, swimming

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Beware of Hype in Training Methods

In fitness, odd and sham training methods are repeated, often whether they are true or not. It's important to remember this. A good example of avoiding this pitfall came from Mark Spitz, who swam at the 1968 and 1972 Olympics. As of this writing in July 2008 he is still the only Olympic athlete to win a gold medal and set a new world record in each in each (individual) event he entered. In an era when other swimmers, male and female were shaving body hair, he swam with a mustache. Mark Spitz is quoted as saying,

"When I went to the Olympics, I had every intention of shaving the mustache off, but I realized I was getting so many comments about it--and everybody was talking about it--that I decided to keep it. I had some fun with a Russian coach who asked me if my mustache slowed me down. I said, No, as a matter of fact, it deflects water away from my mouth, allows my rear end to rise and make me bullet shaped in the water, and that's what had allowed me to swim so great. He's translating as fast as he can for the other coaches, and the following year every Russian male swimmer had a mustache."

Keep this in mind when you automatically believe various training techniques without thinking it through.

I couldn't get a copyright-free photo of Mark Spitz to use for this post. Readers have been asking for more pictures of Paul, so here he is, in the Hudson River:




Related Fitness Fixer:

• Fitness Myths - How Many Legs Does a Dog Have If You Call the Tail a Leg?
• Three Common Swimming and SCUBA Myths in the News Again
• Gluteal Muscles Myth - Shaking The Dog's Paw
• Fixing Fitness Myths

Labels: movie/media fitness, myths, Olympics, performance enhancing modality, practice of medicine, swimming

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Not Old for the Olympics Part II

Yesterday's post, Not Old for the Olympics Part I, told of athletes competing in the highest level athletic events over many years as they get older. The ability to keep physical skills by training is not new or unusual. To keep physical skills, you must continue to use and practice them.

One of my students, Leslie, was featured doing 30 pushups in the March post Are You Stronger Than A 67 Year Old Lady?


Leslie can now do 40 pushups easily, and says her goal is 45 for her 68th birthday this October. I didn't have a camera with me to record her 40 pushups last week in class before posting this post, but will try when I get back from the Wilderness Medicine conference.

Leslie says she wants me to tell all of you that she could not do any pushups when she started working with me. She says it was my training in functional daily movement that made the difference, instead of doing artificial exercises in "sets and reps" for isolated body parts. She says the last 5 of the 45 pushups are hard, but she perseveres and keeps smiling, knowing discipline needs training. Bookmark her movie so you can do your 30 pushups every day with her.

When Dara Torres made the news by qualifying for the Beijing Olympics, the first comments by the masses included that performance enhancement drugs were probably needed. Torres employs a head coach, a sprint coach, a strength coach, two stretchers who moved to Florida to stretch her daily, two masseuses, a chiropractor, a nanny, and household help, with costs estimated at least $100,000 per year, plus the support of family, friends, and good sponsors. You don't win an Olympics alone, but it does not require drugs to get better over years of training. Torres trains hard, and has a team of trainers and people who stretch her, using many of the conventional moves that "work" at the price of her 13 surgeries for injuries.

There are people who state that it is unfair and unethical to use performance-enhancing drugs, but they wear or allow a one thousand dollar engineered bathing suit like the new Speedo LZR. When I was competing, swim goggles were considered an unfair advantage. Mark Spitz won his record setting medals without even wearing goggles. When I was competing, it was considered unfair for an American athlete to earn any money from athletics. No sponsors were allowed. Athletes swept floors to earn money to compete. Today they are not only sponsored and advertised, pro athletes arrive at events with chauffeurs from their villas.

Is it fair to be taller, a trait which favors speed in swimming? Some who say performance-enhancing drugs are wrong will eat engineered food, and use expensive altitude chambers and other training devices. Is it fair to other competitors when one swimmer has a rich family who gives up all to support their dreams? It is considered unfair doping to use certain steroids to hasten healing of internal injuries and soreness from intensive training, but not if you use them to heal skin erosions from the same hard training. Drugs are vilified in some sports, glorified in others, and routinely used in the business and military world for increased concentration and competitiveness, and reduction of hunger and fatigue.

Debate continues about ethics. Two truths are important to remember - Performance enhancing drugs are not necessary to win or to achieve the highest goals of competition. There are women swimmers today who without any drugs are breaking records of men swimmers of the 70's who used steroids. Performance drugs are not healthy. The purpose of athletics is not just to mindlessly best the person next to you. A higher view is the beauty of clean healthy athletics.

Related Fitness Fixer on exercise and aging, and enhancing drugs:

• Exercise and Aging - Don't Limit the Patient to Limit the Pain
• Why So Many Aerobics Injuries?
• Human Growth Hormone
• Rocky IV and Healthier Exercise
• Metabolism - How to Lose Weight and Save Money

Labels: aging, drugs, Olympics, performance enhancing modality, swimming

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Not Old for the Olympics Part I

The 2008 US Olympic swimming trials were held June 29 to July 6 in Omaha, Nebraska, photo at left. New world records were set, including by a swimmer that the news likes to call old. Dara Torres is 41, not old for an athlete.

Swimming is the Olympic event that I trained for over many years. I have seen an assortment of training beliefs and procedures come and go, and hope to post on them as the Olympics begin August 8 in Beijing China. It may seem like a new idea that experience and years of training make you a better athlete, but it is not new to maintain skills, even improve as years pass.

Hiroshi Hoketsu, age 67, will compete in two equestrian events. He was born in Tokyo Japan in 1941.

Dominique D'esme Gerbaud, born 1945 qualified for the French equestrian team.

Rajmond Debevec born in Slovenia Yugoslavia in 1963 is now going to his seventh Olympic Games at age 45. He is an Olympic and world record holder in 50m rifle shooting events.

Laurie Lever, born 1947, will compete in individual and team horse jumping at 60 years old.

John Dane III, born 1950 in New Orleans, LA, will compete for the US at age 58, and Peter Douglass, born 1955 will compete for Barbados in sailing.

Juan Carlos Dasque, born 1952, will compete for Argentina in trap shooting.

Mark Todd, born 1956, has made the New Zealand Equestrian team at age 52.

Juha Hirvi of Finland, born 1960 will go to his third Olympics at 48, competing in Men's 50m Rifle Prone and Men's 50m Rifle 3 Positions.

Canadian Donna Saworski, born 1960, made the fencing team.

Another Canadian, Leslie Thompson-Willie, born 1959, will row crew in the woman's eight, at nearly 49 years old.

Galina Belyayeva of Kazakhstan, born 1951, is scheduled to compete in shooting at age 57. Elizabeth Callahan of the US will compete in pistol shooting at age 58.

Jeff Hartwick, born 1967 qualified for pole vault. Romy Tarangul of Germany, also born in 1967, will compete in Judo at age of almost 41.

Jeannie Longo-Ciprelli, pictured at right, is a French cyclist born 1958, who won three Tour de France races, the Olympic Gold medal in the Atlanta 1996 games, a bronze at the Sydney 2000 Olympics at age 41, made the 2004 Athens Olympics at age 46, and will compete in Beijing in the Women's Individual Time Trial and Women's Road Race at nearly 50 years old (birthday is Oct 31).

Sheila Taormina, born 1969, will go to her fourth Olympics this August in Beijing. She competed in 1996 as a swimmer, the triathlon in 2000 and 2004, and will compete in the Modern Pentathlon (five events) in Beijing, making her the first U.S. athlete to compete in three sports in the Olympics.


Al Oerter, picture at left, born 1936, won four consecutive Olympic gold medals in the discus in 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968, setting Olympic records each time. At age 40 in 1976, he threw his personal best. At age 44, he qualified for the U.S. Olympics trials in 1980. That was the year of the US boycott of the summer games.

The legendary Oerter passed away last year. Thank you Mr. Oerter for your inspiration.


Tomorrow, Not Old for the Olympics Part II - more on aging, athletics, performance enhancing drugs.

Labels: aging, Olympics, swimming, Tour De France

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