Depending on the ambient pressure, gases are released to a different degree from the breathing air into the human body. The proportion of these gases in the body is designated as tissue saturation. The higher the pressure is, the higher the tissue saturation and vice versa. When the ambient pressure changes, the body needs some time though until the saturation adapts to the new circumstances.
Why is tissue saturation so important when diving?
If the ambient pressure changes, then the saturation of the tissue also changes with released gases. Especially nitrogen is released in large quantities in the body. The deeper you dive, the higher the ambient pressure becomes under water and the more nitrogen is released into the body. When ascending, the pressure sinks again and the tissue is then oversaturated. This means that too much nitrogen is released for the current ambient pressure. Therefore, an adjustment must take place again – since this adjustment can take up to a few hours though, the reduction of the saturation must happen slowly.
So if you ascend too quickly, decompression sickness can occur, because the released gas forms bubbles. This process is to be compared with opening a shaken mineral water bottle too quickly. If you open it slowly, the gas can escape. Whereas if you open it suddenly, it foams over.
We use cookies to optimize our website and our service.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.