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Diving safety tipsStaying warm and avoiding getting cold is essential both before your dive, during your dive and after your dive, there are some thing's you can do and precautions you can take to help ensure you stay warm. Getting cold not only threatens your safety from the hyperthermia point of view but cold fingers and hands cause a loss of feeling and dexterity making the simple but essential tasks such as cleaning your face mask, inflating your suit and deploying an SMB can be big problems with cold fingers.The cold also increases the risk of decompression sickness and also increase your consumption of air. The normal body temperature is around 26.9 centigrade so when you go diving in water that is cooler than this you will invariably lose body heat. At a temperature of 35.7 degrees centigrade you will start to shiver and this is when hyperthermia has probably set in, at 34 degrees centigrade may occur and down around 30 to 32 degrees centigrade cardiac irregularities and unconsciousness may occur. As most of the body heat is lost through, the top of the head the wearing of a hood during diving is essential to minimize the loss of body heat. There are certain other precautions you should take and these are: Before the dive * Avoid drinking alcohol and drinks containing caffeine. * Make sure you get plenty of rest and that you are adequately hydrated. * Make sure that you stay warm before the dive, heat loss can start to occur many hours before the actual dive. * Always wear a woollen hat during the hours running up to the dive. * If possible stay indoors for the hours running up to the dive. * Drink plenty of hot drinks before diving. * Keep as dry as possible. During the dive * Always wear a hood and gloves. * Wear sufficient layers of under clothing. * Make sure you have sufficient weight to allow sufficient air into your suit. * Make sure the suit is water tight. * Keep moving in the water. * Always terminate the dive if you feel yourself getting cold. After the dive * Keep moving. * Undo the zipper on your suit to allow air into it. * Keep dry and out of the wind. * Wear gloves and a woollen hat as soon as you come out of the water. * Drink plenty of warm drinks. |
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