By Cathryn Castle Whitman
I scanned it carefully, looking for the glaring error that got overlooked. The photo was of a group of wet-suit-clad divers preparing to gear up for a dive. In it, no one had a snorkel attached to a mask incorrectly, or a too-long belt. The scuba units were stowed properly and no one, heaven forbid, had their mask perched on top of their head, or some other obvious “no-no” likely to set off a letter to the editor.
I didn’t get it.
So, I offered to discuss the reader’s concern in a phone conversation. She e-mailed her phone number, I called, and after we exchanged a few polite greetings she asked, “So, what’s wrong with this picture? Do you get it yet?”
I stared harder. Still, nothing jumped out.
“They’re all obese. Or at least overweight.
”Oh, boy. How I wished I hadn’t started the workday by checking reader mail. As I thought to find a way to address her concern — I figured maybe she was upset that we’d depicted plus-size divers in an unflattering way — she went on to explain that she was a diver and healthcare professional and that, in her opinion, Dive Training wasn’t doing enough to drive home the message that diving is a sport that sometimes requires rigorous physical activity. She encouraged me to get the word out to our readers that being overweight puts divers at increased risk of cardiac arrest while diving, which can prove fatal, especially if a heart attack occurs underwater.
”Oh, boy. How I wished I hadn’t started the workday by checking reader mail. As I thought to find a way to address her concern — I figured maybe she was upset that we’d depicted plus-size divers in an unflattering way — she went on to explain that she was a diver and healthcare professional and that, in her opinion, Dive Training wasn’t doing enough to drive home the message that diving is a sport that sometimes requires rigorous physical activity. She encouraged me to get the word out to our readers that being overweight puts divers at increased risk of cardiac arrest while diving, which can prove fatal, especially if a heart attack occurs underwater.
“For years this industry has been candy-coating diving as a ‘leisure activity’ or a ‘pastime’ rather than what it is — a sport that requires a certain degree of physical fitness and athleticism,” she said. “And as a result, we’re seeing more and more overweight, unfit divers who may not fully understand they’re at risk. The fact is, divers need cardiovascular fitness, and obesity puts a strain on a diver’s heart — not to mention the increased risk of Type II diabetes, which brings its own set of dangers to overweight divers. You need to start by making divers aware of their Body Mass Index (BMI), why it’s important, and how to manage their weight.”
As we finished our call I thanked her for her input and considered ways to include more health-related articles in the magazine. And then I did what I always do when I have a diving medical question. I consulted Divers Alert Network (DAN) for more information.
Here’s what the experts have to say about BMI, excerpted from the DAN Annual Diving Report 2008 Edition: “Data gathered by DAN in recent years indicate that high BMI values are common in persons involved in incidents. The measures are included where available to allow further evaluation of this trend. As a point of personal awareness, BMI is a reasonable benchmark to monitor. Tracking your own score can help you keep your personal fitness efforts focused.”
So there you have it. The report goes on to suggest alternate ways of gauging your own personal fitness for diving. To obtain a downloadable copy, go to http://www.diversalertnetwork.org/ and click on “2008 DAN Diving Report.”
To calculate your own BMI, you can use an online calculator found on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/
bmi/. A BMI of 25-29.9 is considered overweight. A BMI of 30 or greater is considered obese.
So, dear “Anonymous,” I’ve kept my promise. As I mentioned in our phone conversation, we value our readers’ input. While we’re on this subject, we’d like to get your opinion in our Web poll at dtmag.com: Has this industry been candy-coating diving too much as a “leisure activity”?
Really??!! Give me a break..at least they are up off the sofa trying. Let them enjoy themselves. Since when do the hobby police get to decide what someone does or does not do...what are the obese to do?
ReplyDeleteBoth my wife and I were actually quite impressed that our diving has brought us together with a lot of people, many of which are NOT trophy material. Very nice, great divers, personality all sharing a common interest.
On our dive to Florida this spring, I did notice that one of the shapely, young girls had to put just as much effort and contortion in to getting in to her wetsuit that us middle age folks do..what is the saying...we all put our "wetsuits" on the same way.
Find another hobby, if you can not handle the sight of the human body. By the "weigh" the large people in our group, find the freedom that being in the water gives them, quite refreshing and enabling to do more.
I'm still laughing...not that good health is not important, but diving today IS a "leisure sport"!
ReplyDeleteWhen my wife and I first learned to dive on our honeymoon 36 years ago. We were young, fit, athletic and with enough bravado that 22 year olds should have. It was tough...we were inexperienced in life,equipment was near dark ages and we were swimmers (even underwater). Today we are certainly overweight, not obese but we see doctors every year. I laugh when my doctor tells me I am getting excercise when I dive, but not when I play golf. Golf will get your blood pumping, and I've logged more hours running after a golf ball than the hours underwater swimming.
It's much easier today as we do 100% of our diving from liveaboards or accomodating land based dive operations nowadays. Equipment has made your dive stress free and much more comfortable. We also dont "swim" anymore certainly as experience tells you to "stroll". Not very taxing on your cardiovascular system. Our air consumption is such that we can spend double the time underwater than when we were 22.
So, in summary...diving for older overweight people can very easily and most times is a "leisure sport"! Candy coat it all you want.
My wife and I are active NAUI Instructors and we do see our share of students that are over weight and maybe not in the best of physical shape. However, to start our course of instruction the student, no matter their physical size or shape, has to finish a 400 meter swim (in a 50 meter pool), float for 10 minutes, and tread water for 10 minutes. We feel that we are at the beginning of changing their outlook on physical activity and by the completion of the course 3 weeks later they all feel better about themselves. Diving is a physical activity sport but that doesn't mean we should shut the door or prospective students just because their appearance doesn't meet someone's selected standard. We feel that we have impacted students in a life style change; some have stopped smoking, others have started an exercise program of swimming, and others have been encouraged to continue their physical conditioning that they were doing before diving entered their life.
ReplyDeleteI am in my early sixties, and have been scuba diving for more than 40 years. I dive for exercise, therapy, spiritual comfort, and pleasure. I also swim laps, up to 6000 yds. in 3 hrs.
ReplyDeleteMy blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar are all good. After a year of tests and checkups, my cardiologist released me from further treatment. She said that I was doing better for my self than anything she could do for me.
I am also more than 150 lbs. overweight, "morbidly obese" according to the weight tables. My weight problem is an iatrogenic disorder. That means that the damn doctors and drug companies caused it.
In my early twenties, I was a very fit and athletic 6" 1" tall and 185 lbs. I ran, swam, scuba dived, and competed in Judo. In my late twenties, my blood pressure was a little high, so the doctor put me on BP medications.
Within a year, I started to slowly and steadily gain weight, despite continuing to exercise and watch my diet. I told the doctor that something must be wrong with my metabolism. He smirked, rolled his eyes, and dismissed my concerns, saying that if I dieted and exercised, I would lose weight.
35 years, and 150+ lbs. later, I found out that the meds I were taking all those years were known to cause insulin resistance, metabolic disorder, type II diabetes, and obesity. So do more than a hundred other commonly prescribed medications.
At my insistance, the doctor changed my meds. Within a month, I had lost 12 lbs. and my blood sugar went from borderline diabetic to normal. But, I can never lose all the weight I have gained.
By the way, the doctors and drug companies also killed my wife with meds with known, possibly deadly, side effects. So I have little confidence in doctors, and none in pharmaceutical companies. I won't take any meds unless I google them first, and am convinced that they are absolutely necessary.
Diving is the only pleasure I have left, and I intend to continue diving until the day my soul departs this life, whenever that comes, hopefully at the bottom of the sea on my last dive. I shore dive solo, so I am not going to put anyone at risk trying to rescue me. And I really don't care what any nurse, with un-asked-for advise has to say about it.
This artical only focused its view on the over weight people themselves and not the safety factors of other diver. I try to help out at my local dive shop as much as possible, its a great learning tool. And recently I was at a local quarry helping with check out dives. This was a class of about 40 new soon to be divers. In this class there were 6 to 8 very over weight / obese people. Grant it these people did very well in there class work and even in the pool, but my issue came when they had to walk down a slight incline to the dock to enter the water for the check out dive. Three of these people could not do the walk with their gear on. Someone else helped them carry the gear to the dock. Those that helped carry the gear was wearing gear themselves. Two of these people needed someone else to put their gear on for them because they couldn't bend over to pick it up or move their body around to slip it on. All of these people had trouble with keeping there weight belts on. Which they had to have assistants in this throughout the whole dive. Five of these people could not get their own fins on because of their bellys. Now this is all before getting in the water. In the water there were issues I cant directly discuss because I didnt personally see it. I did see two of them surface about 3 minutes into the dive because they overexerted themselves on the decent because they had trouble reaching around themself to get to the inflator hose. To get back on track here there is also the safety aspect of the other diver or divers. Use your imagination here because this can go in many directions.The only thing Im going to say here is, if you cant take care of carrying and donning your own gear, I dont feel that you would be able to do a safe and proper buddy check. so therefore until you can do the physical portion of the dive from top to bottom then you should find a different past time and stay out of the water. Not just for your safety but for others who dive.
ReplyDeletegary
The professional dive industry has a tough job, promote the sport, sell equipment, train divers, sell charters. Notice that three of these four are market driven. Besides being a diver - tech deep rated, I also am a commercial pilot. Aviation has many of the same issues, promote flying, sell planes (harder to do than selling a pair of fins), train pilots.
ReplyDeleteOn many of my dives, esp to vacation spots like the Caribbean or Florida, I have seen 'resort' divers', those with few overall dives and even fewer recent dives being guided to deep (>70 feet) spots. Generally there is a dive master escorting these divers, generally there are more than just a couple of these divers to a single dive master. It makes one pause to wonder what would happen if one of those divers had a serious problem. How could one dive master handle a diver in trouble and calm all the others that are near by? What if the diver in trouble could not ascend immediately, how would the dive master get all the others to the surface? In general and maybe this is somewhat cold, but I avoid those groups and do my own dive. I would help if needed, but I avoid accidents waiting to happen.
I know that you will agree that diving accidents can be related to physical fitness; your phone call to DAN showed this. The bigger problem is that society in general, esp American society, is getting less fit. Training should put emphasis on fitness. Training should also put more emphasis on self reliance rather than your buddy. The best courses I took were the rescue diver course and the technical diver program. I have had shoulder surgery on both shoulders. After the surgery I was considered 'healed' with a 90% range of motion. However 90% won't work for tech diving. I had to train to increase that to around 95% to pass the minimum standards. I did and I continue to do those exercises daily.
Training is done to minimum standards. Maybe some additional skills could be added to the courses. There were student pilots that were failed and do not have licenses because they just could not master the skills. I wonder what the failure rate is in diving, esp a resort schools. There are instructors I personally know that take great pride in what they do; they work very hard, offering extra instruction to those that need extra help. I commend them them for their diligence, for ensuring that the minimums were met and not just the head count of passed students.
I think that all dive magazines should have some articles on fitness. Not in every issue, but several times a year. Just some basic, minimum equipment required stuff. Promote walking, a good fast walk, not a stroll through the mall.
I have enjoyed the many years of diving I have had (originally certified in
1966) and have watched the sport grow. In the early days it was just the adventurers that wanted to learn to dive. Marketing took over and the masses became involved. It remains the marketers responsibility to promote safety and training, not just dollars.
Thank you for publishing, “Candy –coated divers?” in August 2010. The article brings into focus the very important topic of scuba diver fitness. Although as dive professionals and members of the dive industry we must continually take steps to ensure adequate information and education for divers, the most important question may not concern the leisure classification of scuba diving. Rather, are the scuba diver and health care professional adequately educated about the safety of medications in scuba diving? Training agencies, dive centers, Dive Training, and scuba instructors all stress the importance of physical fitness in scuba diving. Even with that education, many scuba divers take medications for disease states that may be partly the result of a lack of physical fitness. Obesity may result in increased incidence of hypertension and diabetes. Medications that are utilized to treat these disorders have therapeutic and side effects that may adversely affect the scuba diver in the hyperbaric environment. A paucity of data exists concerning the effects of medications in the hyperbaric or undersea environment and the possibly eggagerated therapeutic or adverse effects that can result in a scuba diver at depth. Although healthcare providers commonly educate, treat, and prescribe medications for the treatment of diabetes and hypertension, many professionals receive little or no training concerning scuba diving and medications. Coupled with the fact that the average scuba diver age is increasing, medication utilization in active scuba divers will likely increase in the near future, necessitating the need for better healthcare education.
ReplyDeleteMany scuba divers routinely dive while taking prescription and/or nonprescription or herbal remedies. Additionally, alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine maybe in widespread use during the peri-dive period. As a scuba instructor, scuba diver, and pharmacist, I find the number of scuba divers concurrently consuming prescription or nonprescription medications immediately before diving to be surprisingly high. The distinctive diving speciality I teach, Medications & Scuba Diving, is routinely filled with divers asking common questions about medications and their effects. Most divers are looking for answers that they will not typically ask their healthcare provider. I routinely refer them back to their provider with some ideas on how to ask those questions.
Therefore, the correct question may not be does the industry “candy-coat divers”, rather, do we need more education for healthcare and dive professionals concerning medication use in scuba diving? The answer is almost certainly a resounding yes.
Todd L. Wandstrat, BS Pharm, R.Ph, PharmD President & Chief Dive Medicine Officer ScubaPharm, LLC
Thank you for publishing, “Candy –coated divers?” in August 2010. The article brings into focus the very important topic of scuba diver fitness. Although as dive professionals and members of the dive industry we must continually take steps to ensure adequate information and education for divers, the most important question may not concern the leisure classification of scuba diving. Rather, are the scuba diver and health care professional adequately educated about the safety of medications in scuba diving? Training agencies, dive centers, Dive Training, and scuba instructors all stress the importance of physical fitness in scuba diving. Even with that education, many scuba divers take medications for disease states that may be partly the result of a lack of physical fitness. Obesity may result in increased incidence of hypertension and diabetes. Medications that are utilized to treat these disorders have therapeutic and side effects that may adversely affect the scuba diver in the hyperbaric environment. A paucity of data exists concerning the effects of medications in the hyperbaric or undersea environment and the possibly exaggerated therapeutic or adverse effects that can result in a scuba diver at depth. Although healthcare providers commonly educate, treat, and prescribe medications for the treatment of diabetes and hypertension, many professionals receive little or no training concerning scuba diving and medications. Coupled with the fact that the average scuba diver age is increasing, medication utilization in active scuba divers will likely increase in the near future, necessitating the need for better healthcare education.
ReplyDeleteMany scuba divers routinely dive while taking prescription and/or nonprescription or herbal remedies. Additionally, alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine maybe in widespread use during the peri-dive period. As a scuba instructor, scuba diver, and pharmacist, I find the number of scuba divers concurrently consuming prescription or nonprescription medications immediately before diving to be surprisingly high. The distinctive diving specialty I teach, Medications & Scuba Diving, is routinely filled with divers asking common questions about medications and their effects. Most divers are looking for answers that they will not typically ask their healthcare provider. I routinely refer them back to their provider with some ideas on how to ask those questions.
Therefore, the correct question may not be does the industry “candy-coat divers”, rather, do we need more education for healthcare and dive professionals concerning medication use in scuba diving? The answer is almost certainly a resounding yes.
Todd L. Wandstrat, BS Pharm, R.Ph, PharmD President & Chief Dive Medicine Officer ScubaPharm, LLC
Candy-coating diving or not, current medical data is revealing a sharp increase in the number of overweight/obese Americans. The data on childhood obesity is staggering. We are loving ourselves and our kids to death with fatty fast foods and syrupy sugar-laden sodas.
ReplyDeleteIt's time to stop denying it. There are no positive, healthful benefits to being obese.
If we want to live healthy lives that include sports like scuba diving it's time to put down the BigMac and haul our big a$$es to the gym.
-- a former fatty
Hey former fatty,
ReplyDeleteAnd everyone else who is preaching... leave us alone. You do your thing and I will do mine overweight. I've been diving for 30 years and I'm as fit to dive as you. Excuse me, McDonalds is calling.
I'm a New England (Cape Cod and the area) diver; if you can be competent here you can dive anywhere.
ReplyDeleteI dive off private boats as well as the local shop six pack. All the close calls I have seen have involved overweight, out of condition divers.I've seen divers so big a crew member had to put the fins on for them! Listen, as far as I see it, SCUBA is as much a leisure pastime as space flight. We are in a three demensional enviorment that humans are not built to be in without our gear and a modicum of conditioning.
A "buddy" sport? Mmmmm...well...perhaps; in the end you are responsible for your well being at all times. A diver in trouble with weight and condition as major contributory factors puts others at risk. Just try hauling an obese, exahusted, out of air diver who was swept off the ladder in rolling seas, back on the boat.
Wow, Some folks need to chill and mind their own business.
ReplyDeleteYes there are problems with being OBESE! I know I am 52 years old and over 400 pounds. I have worked a desk job with very high stress for the last 15 years and it is killing me. I need to get out of this mess and I am doing something about it.
I am going scuba diving!
I blew my back out years ago by amongst other things, getting bucked off a horse and stomped into the ground. You see I used to be very fit and athletic. Shit happens and the weight builds.
The heavier I got, the harder it is to exercise and get the weight off. It pains me to walk a tred mill or ride a bike. I have both at home and use them not as much as I should. Fact is I hate them!
I scuba dived as a teen and LOVED it I have gotten back into diving after a long hiatus. I have found it to be the perfect exercise for me. No impact and all weight is removed from my frame allowing me to move comfortably and without pain. I swim like a fish and can easily out swim most folks I know. Even quite a few "in shape" swimmers. Don't believe me? Ask my very fit 17 year old daughter. She has just got to the point where she is now faster then me.
Diving is a great form of exercise. I heartily recommend it to everyone I know. Shame on you folks who have a problem with it. Next thing you know the weight police will make it illegal to go to a gym if your overweight. Got to save the other folks who have to look at us fatties.
Truth is, life causes death! Enjoy every day you have and if you like to dive then do it. If someone looks at you cross because you do not measure up to their standard. Then I say flip them the bird and jump into the water. Theirs is the poorer life for it.
Oh! to demonstrate our commitment to make a change in our lives and to go diving, we actually started a new TV show about travel and scuba diving. It's called "Travelers In Paradise" and it premiers on Versus Network on September 28th at 9:30 AM EST. Be sure to watch, unless you are offended by really big folks enjoying the time of their lives scuba diving all around the world, and getting fit in the process!
For some reason this article bothers me. In my opinion, DT puts out some great material. I try to go through it every issue and there is always something worth reading. I disagree with the reader who believes that DT needs to do more on the fitness issue. I think the magazine is doing just fine as it is. Maybe it was just me but I felt the article gave the impression that the “diver/healthcare professional” felt overweight divers shouldn’t be allowed to dive. In my opinion the focus should not be on their weight but on education to becoming a better diver. Personally, I'd rather have a buddy who knew their equipment well, understood the parameters of their dive and knowledge of what to do if something happens. I see ignorance being far more dangerous than a few extra pounds. Besides if being overweight is an issue, than maybe diving might be the incentive needed to help them become a more physically fit diver. It has for me. Keep up with the good educational articles on diving! Know your equipment, know your capabilities - Dive safe!
ReplyDeleteTwo of the best divers I know are obese. One of them has major problems with knee joints. When they are in the water, they are a joy to watch. The water gives them support and makes them the equal of most divers I know who are svelte and athletic. In fact, they are probably better than most svelte and athletic divers I know. Obesity is not the issue with diving. The issue is following Harry Callahan's advice: "A man's gotta know his limitations." That should be the corollary to "Plan your dive and dive your plan." As long as the diver understands that in a head-to-head confrontation, the ocean will always win and dives accordingly, there should be no problem with people of all body types and levels of fitness enjoying the wonders of scuba diving.
ReplyDelete