HOW DO DIVERS GO TO TOLIET UNDER WATER IF THEY HAVE NO PEE VALVE

[DRYSUITLAD12]

HI ALL
JUST WOUNDERING HOW DO DRYSUIT DIVERS GO TO TOLIT IF THEY HAVE NO PEE VALVE ON THEIR DRYSUITS

[johnkendall]

HI ALL
JUST WOUNDERING HOW DO DRYSUIT DIVERS GO TO TOLIT IF THEY HAVE NO PEE VALVE ON THEIR DRYSUITS

Nappies, and there's no need to shout.

John

[David Walker]

JUST WOUNDERING HOW DO DRYSUIT DIVERS GO TO TOLIT IF THEY HAVE NO PEE VALVE ON THEIR DRYSUITS

You could always go before you start the dive...

David

[Darren Morgan]

HI ALL
JUST WOUNDERING HOW DO DRYSUIT DIVERS GO TO TOLIT IF THEY HAVE NO PEE VALVE ON THEIR DRYSUITS

There are three types of diver;
those who pee in their wet suit,
those who deny it,
those with dry suits,
.......and those dumb enough to pee in their dry suits

[TerryH]

:=HI ALL
:=JUST WOUNDERING HOW DO DRYSUIT DIVERS GO TO TOLIT IF THEY HAVE NO PEE VALVE ON THEIR DRYSUITS

There are three types of diver;
those who pee in their wet suit,
those who deny it,
those with dry suits,
.......and those dumb enough to pee in their dry suits

I've never understood all this crud. Remember back in
kindergarden when you had to put your hand up and ask?
Remember when you went to the big school when you were
rediculed if you did the same?

Even on a deeper dive with a bit of deco you'd be hard pushed
to get to just over an hour + getting in out time. 90minutes?

With the understandable exception of serious deco dives lasting
a lot (and I mean a lot) of hours, there really is no excuse
for not going before.

TerryH
Who has NEVER peed in wet or drysuit - EVER!

[johnkendall]

Even on a deeper dive with a bit of deco you'd be hard pushed
to get to just over an hour + getting in out time. 90minutes?

With the understandable exception of serious deco dives lasting
a lot (and I mean a lot) of hours, there really is no excuse
for not going before.

Um, on any of my dives, especially when I'm doing deeper stuff, I want to be VERY VERY hydrated. This means drinking lots of fluids in the week running up to the dives, and probably a couple of litres during the ride out to the dive. Doing a 30 minute or so final stop, and you will need to pee. There are 4 options. A P-valve (Which is the option I went for), Nappies, Try and hold it in, and Pee in your suit. Options 1 and 2 are better IMO. Whether or not you go before the dive, if you are properly hydrated you will need to go near the end of the dive as well.

John

[Edward Haynes]

John

I don't do your sort of diving, but have you heard of the medical problems track athelets are now experiencing through drinking to much water. They are dying.

As an example: <a href="http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,5033,s6-78-0-0-5382,00.html" >http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,5033,s6-78-0-0-5382,00.html</a>
Titled: Drink to Your Health
"Sure, you should drink regularly. But exactly how much water do you need? And why are some runners dying from excessive fluid consumption" by: Amby Burfoot

Edward


Um, on any of my dives, especially when I'm doing deeper stuff, I want to be VERY VERY hydrated. This means drinking lots of fluids in the week running up to the dives, and probably a couple of litres during the ride out to the dive. Doing a 30 minute or so final stop, and you will need to pee. There are 4 options. A P-valve (Which is the option I went for), Nappies, Try and hold it in, and Pee in your suit. Options 1 and 2 are better IMO. Whether or not you go before the dive, if you are properly hydrated you will need to go near the end of the dive as well.

John

[TerryH]

:=Even on a deeper dive with a bit of deco you'd be hard pushed
:=to get to just over an hour + getting in out time. 90minutes?
:=
:=With the understandable exception of serious deco dives lasting
:=a lot (and I mean a lot) of hours, there really is no excuse
:=for not going before.

Um, on any of my dives, especially when I'm doing deeper stuff, I want to be VERY VERY hydrated. This means drinking lots of fluids in the week running up to the dives, and probably a couple of litres during the ride out to the dive. Doing a 30 minute or so final stop, and you will need to pee. There are 4 options. A P-valve (Which is the option I went for), Nappies, Try and hold it in, and Pee in your suit. Options 1 and 2 are better IMO. Whether or not you go before the dive, if you are properly hydrated you will need to go near the end of the dive as well.

John

Common old wives tale and one that seems to have found it's way
into diving.
Many years ago (in the sixties I believe) there was a study
that concluded the average human must have between 7 & 10
litres of water a day.

Since then this has been repeated ad nauseum and you see many
health freaks going way over the top with hydration. Trouble
is that the actual wording of the study (which was ignored)
said 7-10 litres "IN TOTAL" and that includes water in foods.
So as long as you have that ammount of water you will be ok.
But ..........
Later research has proven that it's benifcial for some of this
intake to be water.

So bang on the tail of all this lot we have the DCI/hydration
issue. It is absolutely right for many reasons (Including DCI)
that you need to be hydrated, but VERY, VERY hydrated. No.

TerryH

[Tony Dwyer]

:=
:=:=Even on a deeper dive with a bit of deco you'd be hard pushed
:=:=to get to just over an hour + getting in out time. 90minutes?
:=:=
:=:=With the understandable exception of serious deco dives lasting
:=:=a lot (and I mean a lot) of hours, there really is no excuse
:=:=for not going before.
:=
:=Um, on any of my dives, especially when I'm doing deeper stuff, I want to be VERY VERY hydrated. This means drinking lots of fluids in the week running up to the dives, and probably a couple of litres during the ride out to the dive. Doing a 30 minute or so final stop, and you will need to pee. There are 4 options. A P-valve (Which is the option I went for), Nappies, Try and hold it in, and Pee in your suit. Options 1 and 2 are better IMO. Whether or not you go before the dive, if you are properly hydrated you will need to go near the end of the dive as well.
:=
:=John

Common old wives tale and one that seems to have found it's way
into diving.
Many years ago (in the sixties I believe) there was a study
that concluded the average human must have between 7 & 10
litres of water a day.

Since then this has been repeated ad nauseum and you see many
health freaks going way over the top with hydration. Trouble
is that the actual wording of the study (which was ignored)
said 7-10 litres "IN TOTAL" and that includes water in foods.
So as long as you have that ammount of water you will be ok.
But ..........
Later research has proven that it's benifcial for some of this
intake to be water.

So bang on the tail of all this lot we have the DCI/hydration
issue. It is absolutely right for many reasons (Including DCI)
that you need to be hydrated, but VERY, VERY hydrated. No.

TerryH

I'm with Terry on this. Your kidneys generally work to remove impurities and EXCESS liquid from your system. If you load it up with water, they will attempt to dispose of it for you.
Granted cold does increase urine production, but it should not be a problem for a generally fit person.
Be hydrated, not saturated!

Tony

[steve swift]

I remember reading somewhere that the fact that we are essentially weightless underwater increases the need to urinate: or is that another old wive's tales?

Yes here we go: from the BSAC manual 1985:

Paraphrased: when weightless, less blood pooling in the circulation of the legs so therefore more in the trunk area. Increased blood volume in the trunk area makes the kidneys think there is too much blood and create more urine to reduce blood volume.

Steve
(who is guaranteed to need to go as soon as his drysuit zip is done up ;-)))

[iainmsmith]

I remember reading somewhere that the fact that we are essentially weightless underwater increases the need to urinate: or is that another old wive's tales?

Yes here we go: from the BSAC manual 1985:

Paraphrased: when weightless, less blood pooling in the circulation of the legs so therefore more in the trunk area. Increased blood volume in the trunk area makes the kidneys think there is too much blood and create more urine to reduce blood volume.

Steve
(who is guaranteed to need to go as soon as his drysuit zip is done up ;-)))

It's true(ish). As Tony points out, it's not weightlessness per se. It's actually water pressure. Increased pressure on the body results in greater pressure on the capillaries and great vessels. Thus there is a movement of blood from the extremities to the core, blood pressure goes up and the body reacts to reduce this by eliminating fluid in the form of urine.

In the longer term, the body decreases the sympathetic tone to the vasculature (ie the nerves which keep tension in the peripheral blood vessels fire less often and allow those vessels to relax) allowing increased peripheral circulation.

This is the phenomenon that results in immersion shock and the reason that helicopters will not lift people vertically out of the water - if the casualty has been in the water for some time, the nervous system does not react fast enough when the casualty is plucked from the water and the blood literally drains into the legs...at the expense of the brain. Result: dead casualty by the time they reach the helicopter.

What I'm not sure about is how long it takes for water pressure to abolish peripheral vascular tone - it seems clear that it is longer than an hour-and-a-half, otherwise we'd all die climbing boat ladders! So for that time, the body is busy reducing central vascular pressure by producing lots of urine.

There's also the issue of cold that Tony mentioned: When you get peripherally shut down, even more blood is shunted centrally, thus increasing the central vascular pressures and renal blood flow, thus even more urine is produced.

One also needs to consider that a diver will often be suited up for a reasonable period on the way out to the site and (especially if humping technical kit around) sweating buckets prior to getting in the water. Depending on how well the skipper has judged slack, John and I have had people pouring buckets of sea water over us to try to keep us cool.

I think the point that John was trying to make was that proper hydration is not something that can be accompanied the night before, nor after a heavy night. If you dump a lot of hypotonic fluid into your body (ie drinking lots of water), you dilute your blood very quickly and the kidney gets busy excreting it to normalise the blood chemisty.. Likewise large volumes of isotonic fluid - there's a volume overload which is dealt with. I also know that John has a habit of living on Colas and coffee - hence a few days of drinking sensible fluids is almost certainly to his benefit! :-)

Personally, I do make an effort to increase the amount of water/non-diuretic fluids for a few days before a big dive, but not to the extent that I feel I'm forcing it down. I will tend to sip isotonic drinks all the way out on the boat, especially if I'm zipped in all the way or if it's a very hot day and will similarly drink isotonic drinks after the dive, which is when I'll be most dehydrated, due to sweating on the way out, then the pressure and temperature diuresis during the dive.

With all due respect to those who don't think that needing to pass urine should be a problem to a healthy person, I need to by the end of a dive, even when I haven't been actively hydrating. Maybe, despite having been a student, I just never got into the habit of drinking sufficiently large amounts of beer to enlarge my bladder! :-) [NB: No insult or suggestion that anyone is a boozer intended!]

Iain

[Nigel Hewitt]

Common old wives tale and one that seems to have found it's way into diving.

Yup. I'm under Urology at the local hospital after a run in with Kidney Stones and my orders are to drink 3L a day of actual drinks.

I only need to hook up the P-valve if I'm planing over an hour of stops, not really because I can't make it but because once you start thinking about it....

[hickdive]

As long as my urine is virtually colourless and plentiful then that's all I look for.

Sadly, I have developed a couple of pavlovian reactions in diving;

The sight of a mask makes me salivate and the sound of my zip closing makes me want to pee :-(

[Tony Dwyer]

I remember reading somewhere that the fact that we are essentially weightless underwater increases the need to urinate: or is that another old wive's tales?

Yes here we go: from the BSAC manual 1985:

Paraphrased: when weightless, less blood pooling in the circulation of the legs so therefore more in the trunk area. Increased blood volume in the trunk area makes the kidneys think there is too much blood and create more urine to reduce blood volume.

Steve
(who is guaranteed to need to go as soon as his drysuit zip is done up ;-)))

Yup, it's in there and is worded badly. At no time is a diver ever actually weightless, except when in free fall, having jumped off the boat.
He or she will hopefully be neutrally buoyant, but gravity will still be acting on his/her body. Including all the bits inside.
If one is vertical in the water, blood will still be pulled into the legs. The fluid is still subject to gravity.
I suspect the observed phenomemonon of increased urine production is simply due to the fact that most of the time divers are horizontal. Thus the blood does not generally get drawn into the legs. This has the effect of increasing the volume of blood available in the trunk and may fool the system into thinking thata there is excess liquid.
Probably explains why I keep waking up in the night for a pee too!

[iainmsmith]

Yup, it's in there and is worded badly. At no time is a diver ever actually weightless, except when in free fall, having jumped off the boat.

Ahem, yes. See my edited post for a rather better explanation.

He or she will hopefully be neutrally buoyant, but gravity will still be acting on his/her body. Including all the bits inside.
If one is vertical in the water, blood will still be pulled into the legs. The fluid is still subject to gravity.

It won't be pulled into the legs any more than it is when walking around on the surface. The gravity change between surface at -50m isn't hugely significant!

I suspect the observed phenomnemonon of increased urine production is simply due to the fact that most of the time divers are horizontal.

If only they were...!

Iain

[DRYSUITLAD12]

:=HI ALL
:=JUST WOUNDERING HOW DO DRYSUIT DIVERS GO TO TOLIT IF THEY HAVE NO PEE VALVE ON THEIR DRYSUITS

Nappies, and there's no need to shout.

John

HI JOHN
THANKS FOR YOUR ADVICE THERE IS ANOTHER WAY I HEARD THERE IS A DEVICE THAT DIVERS CAN USE COULD YOU TELL ME WHAT THIS DEVICE IS CALLED AND HOW WOULD I CONNECT IT

[Tony Dwyer]

:=Yup, it's in there and is worded badly. At no time is a diver ever actually weightless, except when in free fall, having jumped off the boat.

Ahem, yes. See my edited post for a rather better explanation.

:=He or she will hopefully be neutrally buoyant, but gravity will still be acting on his/her body. Including all the bits inside.
:=If one is vertical in the water, blood will still be pulled into the legs. The fluid is still subject to gravity.

It won't be pulled into the legs any more than it is when walking around on the surface. The gravity change between surface at -50m isn't hugely significant!

Yes - absolutely.

:=I suspect the observed phenomnemonon of increased urine production is simply due to the fact that most of the time divers are horizontal.

If only they were...!

Iain

Grin!

[iainmsmith]

:=:=HI ALL
:=:=JUST WOUNDERING HOW DO DRYSUIT DIVERS GO TO TOLIT IF THEY HAVE NO PEE VALVE ON THEIR DRYSUITS
:=
:=Nappies, and there's no need to shout.
:=
:=John

HI JOHN
THANKS FOR YOUR ADVICE THERE IS ANOTHER WAY I HEARD THERE IS A DEVICE THAT DIVERS CAN USE COULD YOU TELL ME WHAT THIS DEVICE IS CALLED AND HOW WOULD I CONNECT IT

STOP SHOUTING!!!! Please!

Capitalising everything makes text difficult to read.

The most common devices are p-valves, where the (male) diver wears a rubber sheath which looks like a condom with a tube at the end of it. This connects to a piece of rubber tubing which connects to the outside world via a piece of plastic which is fitted through the drysuit. A special bolt is typically screwed into this piece of plastic and allows the passage of urine when partially unscrewed. There may or may not be one-way in the rubber piping to prevent leakage of seawater into the suit in the event that the condom catheter becomes displaced or disconnected.

Examples can be seen at:
<a href="http://www.othree.co.uk/pvalve.html" >http://www.othree.co.uk/pvalve.html</a>
<a href="http://www.halcyon.net/exposure/discharge.shtml" >http://www.halcyon.net/exposure/discharge.shtml</a>

The other option is, as John said, nappies. (aka incontinence pads)

The final alternative that I can think of (but know no-one who uses) would be a condom catheter with a leg-bag attached via tubing. This would then collect the urine in a bag, inside the drysuit. I would not want to use such a system without a one-way valve in the tubing. You could probably pick up the necessary components at any chemist (with the possible exception of the one way valve). I would be concerned about the chances of pulling the whole lot apart when getting out of the drysuit, with rather messy consequences.

Regards,

Iain

[DRYSUITLAD12]

:=HI ALL
:=JUST WOUNDERING HOW DO DRYSUIT DIVERS GO TO TOLIT IF THEY HAVE NO PEE VALVE ON THEIR DRYSUITS

Nappies, and there's no need to shout.

John

Hi john
thanks for the advice this will help me very much as i am going to norway an will be diving for a long time

[Tony Dwyer]

:=I remember reading somewhere that the fact that we are essentially weightless underwater increases the need to urinate: or is that another old wive's tales?
:=
:=Yes here we go: from the BSAC manual 1985:
:=
:=Paraphrased: when weightless, less blood pooling in the circulation of the legs so therefore more in the trunk area. Increased blood volume in the trunk area makes the kidneys think there is too much blood and create more urine to reduce blood volume.
:=
:=Steve
:=(who is guaranteed to need to go as soon as his drysuit zip is done up ;-)))

It's true(ish). As Tony points out, it's not weightlessness per se. It's actually water pressure. Increased pressure on the body results in greater pressure on the capillaries and great vessels. Thus there is a movement of blood from the extremities to the core, blood pressure goes up and the body reacts to reduce this by eliminating fluid in the form of urine.

In the longer term, the body decreases the sympathetic tone to the vasculature (ie the nerves which keep tension in the peripheral blood vessels fire less often and allow those vessels to relax) allowing increased peripheral circulation.

This is the phenomenon that results in immersion shock and the reason that helicopters will not lift people vertically out of the water - if the casualty has been in the water for some time, the nervous system does not react fast enough when the casualty is plucked from the water and the blood literally drains into the legs...at the expense of the brain. Result: dead casualty by the time they reach the helicopter.

Interesting.
I'm familiar with emersion shock, but am not clear on why pressure should be a problem, since it acts equally all over the body. Add in the fact that one breathes gas at ambient pressure?
Divers are nearly always in a state of change with regard to pressure and are not usually at equilibrium for long and will either be undersaturated or super-saturated during the course of a dive. This must make for a difficult state to model when considering the effects on urine production.
The effect of cold and true weightlessness with regard to urine production are well understood. I would like to understand the mechanism you describe more fully. Can you point me at any references?

Thanks.

Tony

[Hannah Thompson]

It's alright for you blokes, you get P valves what do us girlies get - absolutly nowt - when can someone invent a pvalve for us (you're going to tell me they've done it, now ain't you). All we can do is wear nappies or keep our legs crossed and find a nice person to unzip us as soon as we land on dry ground, yes i'll ask anyone!!

I wouldn't recommend you men keeping your legs crossed - it's supposed to be linked to prostate cancer!!! - get the nappies on boys!!

H x

As long as my urine is virtually colourless and plentiful then that's all I look for.

Sadly, I have developed a couple of pavlovian reactions in diving;

The sight of a mask makes me salivate and the sound of my zip closing makes me want to pee :-(

[iainmsmith]

Tony,

Apologies for my oversimplistic description. Unfortunately, I haven't got time to elaborate at the moment, but in terms of references, a good starting point for any diving physiology question is Bennett and Elliot's "Physiology and Medicine of Diving", 5th Editition, published 2003 by Harcourt. Unfortunately, this is not a particularly cheap book - it goes for about ?95 and I haven't got it on my bookshelf (yet!) Lowrey et al, which I do have, concentrates on the medical aspects of diving, rather than the physiological.

Otherwise, a Medline search will bring you up several articles if you enter "immersion diuresis scuba" (or similar) as the search terms.

By complete coincidence, the only copy of "Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine" that I have on my bookshelf at the moment (all the others being in storage as we move house) has an article with several relevant references. I can send these to you, but getting hold of Bennett and Elliott might be a better start (esp if you, or someone you know, has access to a University Library.)

I can't quickly find a reference which discusses horizontal, fully submerged physiology, but wouldn't be surprised if one is out there somewhere!

Hope this helps.

Iain

[Tony Dwyer]

Tony,

Apologies for my oversimplistic description. Unfortunately, I haven't got time to elaborate at the moment, but in terms of references, a good starting point for any diving physiology question is Bennett and Elliot's "Physiology and Medicine of Diving", 5th Editition, published 2003 by Harcourt. Unfortunately, this is not a particularly cheap book - it goes for about ?95 and I haven't got it on my bookshelf (yet!) Lowrey et al, which I do have, concentrates on the medical aspects of diving, rather than the physiological.

Otherwise, a Medline search will bring you up several articles if you enter "immersion diuresis scuba" (or similar) as the search terms.

By complete coincidence, the only copy of "Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine" that I have on my bookshelf at the moment (all the others being in storage as we move house) has an article with several relevant references. I can send these to you, but getting hold of Bennett and Elliott might be a better start (esp if you, or someone you know, has access to a University Library.)

I can't quickly find a reference which discusses horizontal, fully submerged physiology, but wouldn't be surprised if one is out there somewhere!

Hope this helps.

Iain

Thanks for the heads up. I will dig further.

regards

Tony

[Ben Field]

&gt; when can someone invent a pvalve for us (you're going to tell &gt; me they've done it, now ain't you).

Yes... (sorry :) But while it worked okay the side effects made it somewhat unsellable, some nasty infections or so I heard... I'm sure you can imagine what they tried, while it works in a hospital its not so great in the unhygenic world of diving (not that I'd be so stupid to call a Hospital hygenic)

&gt; All we can do is wear nappies or keep our legs crossed and
&gt; find a nice person to unzip us as soon as we land on dry
&gt; ground, yes i'll ask anyone!!

Hanging over the back of the rib hugging the outboard was always what the girls in our club did...
Besides, nappys keep your butt warm, apparently?

A girl on a trip we joined this summer had a p-valve but she kept real quite about how it worked, she was germn so maybe search some german tech-dive web-sites? Alledgedly it involved glue........ (I was afraid to ask anymore than that.)

BEN

[Ben Field]

&gt; when can someone invent a pvalve for us (you're going to tell &gt; me they've done it, now ain't you).

Yes... (sorry :) But while it worked okay the side effects made it somewhat unsellable, some nasty infections or so I heard... I'm sure you can imagine what they tried, while it works in a hospital its not so great in the unhygenic world of diving (not that I'd be so stupid to call a Hospital hygenic)

&gt; All we can do is wear nappies or keep our legs crossed and
&gt; find a nice person to unzip us as soon as we land on dry
&gt; ground, yes i'll ask anyone!!

Hanging over the back of the rib hugging the outboard was always what the girls in our club did...
Besides, nappys keep your butt warm, apparently?

A girl on a trip we joined this summer had a p-valve but she kept real quite about how it worked, she was germn so maybe search some german tech-dive web-sites? Alledgedly it involved glue........ (I was afraid to ask anymore than that.)

BEN

[Andy Wade]

Hanging over the back of the rib hugging the outboard was always what the girls in our club did...

Oh thanks Ben.
I thought I'd purged this image from my mind.

About 10 years ago I surfaced from under the boat after a dive to be faced with....
Well, I'm sure you can guess.

8-P



.

[Hannah Thompson]

A girl on a trip we joined this summer had a p-valve but she kept real quite about how it worked, she was germn so maybe search some german tech-dive web-sites? Alledgedly it involved glue........ (I was afraid to ask anymore than that.)

oh my god, ouch, i'm crossing my legs now and not because i need the loo!!! - i don't think i want to know any more - i'll keep asking random strangers to unzip my suit whilst bobbing up and down with my legs crossed, but thanks anyway.

Besides i've seen your P valves and i wouldn't want to wear one (appart from it wouldn't fit) they look painfull.

One behalf of keeping your legs crossed everytime, because peeing in your suit is minging (IMHO)

H x

BEN