Does physical fitness play a role in decompression?
Fitness is very important but it’s probably more helpful in terms of your ability to perform, for instance to swim, than at a cellular level. Someone who’s extremely fit can probably decompress a bit more aggressively than someone’s who isn’t. But someone who’s overweight could have problems because of circulation and the way fat takes up gas. Q: Should all tech divers be routinely tested for PFO? A: That’s a tough question. We’re fairly sure that people have bubbles on what I’d call ordinary dives. Now, some bubbles are tolerable, but we don’t really know the point at which they become troublesome. If you start to have underserved problems, then you should have it checked. But the pressure pattern in the heart doesn’t just push bubbles from the right side to the left because there’s a hole there. The flow is more likely to be in the other direction because the pressure is higher on the left side. You have to have a PFO and some kind of a pressure disorder, such as you get when doing a
