Deep-sea divers take careful measures to avoid "the bends," a painful condition where gas bubbles form in divers' blood and tissues when they ascend from the depths too quickly. Now, a new study using unlikely test subjects — pigs in diving suits — has shown that switching up the gas they breathe underwater may help divers avoid this dreaded decompression sickness.
One day, the lessons from the research may help humans dive deeper for longer and get back to the surface more quickly, the study authors say. The work was published Aug. 10 in the journal PNAS.
Study co-author Dr. Richard Moon, an anesthesiologist and professor of medicine at Duke University, has treated many cases of decompression sickness over his career. He's even suffered from mild cases of the bends himself. While Moon only experienced slight joint pain in these instances, serious cases of decompression sickness can be fatal, blocking blood flow around the body and damaging the heart and other organs.
The trouble begins with the gases divers breat...
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