What happens when you get the bends?
In: Biology
The highly pressurized air you breathe from your tank underwater (mostly nitrogen-typically the same air we breath above) gets absorbed by your lungs into your bloodstream. When at depth, the gasses are dissolved in your blood.
When divers ascend, the external pressure on the body decreases, and like a bottle of soda, the gas in the tissues starts forming microscopic bubbles in the body. Ascend quickly, the bubbles get too large, too quickly and if they form in the wrong places like muscle joints or nerves, you can get physical symptoms like pain and muscle weakness.
You know when you shake a closed bottle of soda, and all the fizz comes flying out when you open it?
Imagine that, but in your bloodstream. Ascending slowly is like slowly opening the bottle so it only fizzes like it normally should.
Nitrogen gets compressed into your blood by the pressure when you go deep, and if you come up fast enough, it fizzes out when the pressure is released, like the carbon dioxide in soda water, causing intense pain and a lot of nastier effects.
Compressed gas (nitrogen) starts expanding and bubbling up in your blood and internal organs. This causes pain, cramps, and possibly death. It is due to pressure differences between the water surface and how deep you dive in the water.
I assume this is related to scuba diving, yes?
Basically, there is always a little bit of “air” disolved in your blood stream. Normally, this isn’t an issue because the amount dissolved is in balance with the atmospheric pressure and you don’t change pressure rapidly enough for any issues to arise.
However, when you dive, you go to depths where the pressure can be much, much higher. Due to this, more air gets dissolved in your blood stream. When you ascend _slowly_, this air can come out of your blood slowly and you don’t know anything is happening.
However, if you ascend too quickly, the air comes out too quickly and can actually form air bubbles in your blood vessels. These bubbles restrict blood flow, causing incredible pain and potential death. That is what the bends is.
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