Blog: "Scuba diving in the sea makes my LongCOVID symptoms/PEM almost disappear. For the third time."

Formerhuman said:
I think my case of orthostatic intolerance is caused by pooling of blood in the lower part of the body.
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Possibly my experience too. My legs turn purple when I stand after taking a warm shower, I need to lie down for half an hour after to recover.

But after I go for power walks in the evenings when I'm feeling better, I can sit upright for hours after w/o any issues and can talk on the phone w/o cognitive issues. I have increased blood flow circulation to my brain.
 
Yup - scuba diving. It’s not as if he was housebound or bedridden leading up to it though.

I tried Scuba in the past but wasn’t taken with it. Is there any science worth examining in the relationship of the oxygen delivery, or delivery under pressure (as you are underwater)?
People are always trying to make hyperbaric chambers or blood gas exchange a cure, aren’t they?
 
In my initial days of mild ME/CFS my appointed exercise regime for my GET was swimming. Admittedly I didn't go more than pool deep but I was still picking things up off the bottom of the pool which is fairly similar to scuba diving. If pressure helps its more than pool depth that is necessary and more than the time a breath can last. This wasn't the exertion that final broke me to moderate though, I seemed to tolerate it up until the poinmt I really didn't.
 
From Dirk Paessler (Blogger on this thread):

"But I believe that the combination of my repeated observations and Wirth's mechanistic framework suggests: Water immersion and hydrostatic pressure as a therapeutic tool for Long COVID deserve systematic investigation."
 
"PS: I have Long COVID. Not ME/CFS — I need to clarify that, because the difference is important. My case is moderate: PEM, dysautonomia, limited tolerance for exertion. I'm mostly functional, but always with a tight energy budget."
 
Mij said:
From Dirk Paessler (Blogger on this thread):

"But I believe that the combination of my repeated observations and Wirth's mechanistic framework suggests: Water immersion and hydrostatic pressure as a therapeutic tool for Long COVID deserve systematic investigation."
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See that’s fair, it deserves some proper investigation.

It’s more deserving than the endless re-investigation of perceived personality “flaws” as a cause/cure.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
Even lying down is different because the underneath parts of you are under the downward pressure of the top parts. In water hat downward pressure is counteracted by pressure from surrounding water. You are weightless for all practical purposes.
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I’m not sure I follow.

When you’re inside a neutrally buoyant submerged submarine, you experience gravity like on the surface. The stuff inside doesn’t float around like at the International Space Station that’s in a continuous free fall.

So your blood will still seek to go «downwards» in the direction of the force of gravity.

That is counteracted by the external pressure of the water, the dive reflex, and colder temperatures that make the blood go towards the center of the body (and/or the most important organs), but those forces will also make it harder for the blood to go outwards in any direction, not just downwards. Although those forces probably might be magnitudes higher than gravity, rendering gravity irrelevant? Maybe that was your point all along.
Jonathan Edwards said:
One of the few differences is that your bone-locked semicircular canals are not affected by the surrounding water so you can still have a sense of being the right way up.
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How come people that have been in avalanches frequently report not knowing which way is up or down? A common survival tip is to drool and let gravity tell you which was you’re oriented.

Maybe they’ve been knocked about so much that their sense of direction is temporarily out of order.
 
His experience seems like something that would be useful to test with other patients and in more controlled way.

I feel much better for a while after certain stimuli like cold water immersion or sauna, if done the right way. I can believe what he says.
 
Utsikt said:
When you’re inside a neutrally buoyant submerged submarine,
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That is quite different because the pressure difference around your body in a submarine varies from head to toe only by the weight of some air in the submarine. If you fill the submarine with water your toes are subject to the pressure due to the weight of water between your head and your toes, which pushes the blood back up as much as it own gravity pushes it down.

The relevant forces are just the differential forces due to weigh tof watr, whether blood inside or sea outside. The total pressure at 30 metres depth will be very high but since blood is not compressible much it doesn't make any real difference. It only makes a difference to the gases in your chest and dissolved in the blood.
 
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