Citation

Tipton MJ. Eur. J. Appl. Physiol. Occup. Physiol. 1989; 59(5): 360-364.

Affiliation

Institute of Naval Medicine, Gosport, Hants, UK.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1989, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

2598916

Abstract

Eighteen healthy male volunteers undertook three seated submersions into stirred water at 5 degrees C. Whilst submerged, the subjects attempted to hold their breath for 20 s. They wore a different clothing assembly for each submersion, viz: a cotton overall assembly, a "wet suit" assembly and a "dry suit" assembly. During the experiments the breath-hold time, heart rate, skin and rectal temperatures of the subjects were recorded. The results showed that significantly (P less than 0.05) more subjects developed a diving bradycardia--defined as five or more consecutive R-R intervals of over 1.2 s--when wearing the dry suit. It is concluded that increasing the cold stress experienced by individuals during cold-water submersion decreases the incidence of diving bradycardia but not the magnitude of the bradycardia when it occurs.

Language: en