Scuba divers must be aware of the many risks they will face while diving. These risks have a lot of shapes as it can vary from malfunctioning equipment to something more dangerous like a fatal health condition.

Our topic today is about one of the uncommon fatal health conditions facing divers underwater. A rare case if we decided to be more precise, but it will be a very real threat if you suffered from it during your dive. It is Nitrogen narcosis.

What is nitrogen narcosis?

This case has a lot of names, such as:

• Inert gas narcosis.
• Ruptures of the deep.
• The martini effect.

The main reason to catch this case is breathing high concentrations of nitrogen while being underwater. Interestingly, you can also suffer from this phenomena while skydiving 100 feet in the air.

It is obvious that divers breathe mixed air nitrogen under high pressure through a scuba tank. This condition occurs when the diver goes deeper underwater, where nitrogen’s partial pressure increases until it ends up with more nitrogen getting absorbed into your bloodstream.

When there is a high concentration of nitrogen in your bloodstream, the nervous system will begin to function slowly and an intoxicating effect will appear at the diver leading to impairment of their judgment underwater. This impairment will be enough to put them in dangerous situations.

Nitrogen Narcosis Symptoms

In most cases, the effects of narcosis appear right away. The scientists believe that nitrogen gas reacts with lipid and fat tissues of which the brain is made up of. So, the effect of narcosis on the brain will be more than just a mess with your brain.

We can summarize nitrogen narcosis symptoms in the following points:

• Mental ability becomes slow

When you get nitrogen narcosis, nitrogen acts like an anesthetic and reduces your mental power to be like a drunk man.

Complex thinking becomes variably harder and you feel like there are clouds in your head . Since it becomes hard to think of multiple things at the same time, diving will be a real problem to you, as diving is a multitasking sport, because it involves monitoring and dealing with a lot of things at the same time such as buoyancy, your body, your depth, tank pressure, etc …

• Euphoria

While experiencing nitrogen narcosis, divers act as if they are drunk on stimulating drugs. This appears in their actions by doing weird or pretty amusing things like chasing fish or hearing fish sing or even talk.

• Numbness

Affected divers of narcosis can feel numbness. During diving, this can be very dangerous as it may reduce the diver’s perception and may cause the water to get too cold and the diver’s mind can’t tell the body to regulate its own temperature.

• Convulsions

In severe cases of narcosis, diver shall experience convulsions which ends up with losing of consciousness in extreme cases. It is very dangerous because it can lead to instant death underwater.

• Hallucinations

Some divers may behave in ways causing more concern in more severe cases like checking any equipment for air pressure instead of the gauge or trying to almost kill divers who dive with him. So, don’t think it’s pretty harmless.

• Sudden depression

Nitrogen can cause substantial effects on the brain which in turn may cause a depressed mental state. That’s all because of the fact that it is an inert gas.

While most of the symptoms disappear upon being on the surface, some of these symptoms can prevent the proper ascension.

• short-term memory loss

A probable result of nitrogen narcosis is short-term memory loss. Affected divers may forget most of their recent training or how to use their scuba gear and equipment (like BCDs). Sometimes they may even forget the task they came for.

 

Nitrogen Narcosis Treatment

First off, this case shows to you the importance of following the rules of diving. As during deep dives, the symptoms of narcosis become more noticeable and the diver may become unable to take control of the situation. This is one of the cases that highlights the importance of a dive body.

Fortunately, nitrogen narcosis treatment can be enacted while you are still diving. Just follow the following steps:

• Ascent

The symptoms of nitrogen narcosis are completely reversible. The first step in nitrogen narcosis treatment is to simply ascend to a shallowed depth at a safe rate. This will decrease the pressure of nitrogen.

• Wait

After ascent for a while the diver should stop for a moment to make the body re-adjust the change in pressure. This will end up with disappearing symptoms and fortunately, narcosis has no long-term effects.

• Re-evaluate

Once the diver feels comfortable and well enough after the symptoms disappear, they can continue the dive, but they shouldn’t return to the specific depth in where the symptoms began.