Eli5 how does decompression illness kill you?
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Because nitrogen bubbles build up in your blood and if they get to critical areas they can cause serious irreversible damage.
For example, if you had bubbles build up in the coronary arteries of your heart, no blood gets to your cells in your heart and life is just not worth living without oxygen and nutrients. You go into cardiac arrest if too much damage happens and boom, game over bro.
Decompression sickness causes nitrogen bubbles to form in your bloodstream and tissues due to rapid reduction of pressure after being exposed to high pressure environments like scuba diving.
The bubbles formed are so small, imagine them being like froth. These bubbles clog your blood vessels and prevents tissues from getting oxygen from the blood so your cells are suffocating.
I had an accident at a dive last year. Hands got numb, feet too. Before getting to a decompression chamber it had started spreading to my neck and head. Was quite a surreal feeling. I had to do two rounds of that chamber, very grateful for how well it worked but I never want to do that again…
Put a liquid under pressure and you put a lot more stuff in it, namely gasses. Now take that pressure away and poof, all those gasses are still there but the liquid can‘t keep them dissolved anymore. The gas has to go somewhere and it forms bubbles in your bloodstream which can block blood vessels to organs
A lot of the answers here talk about “the bends” but another thing that falls into the category of decompression injuries is lung damage. If you ascend too quickly whilst holding your breath the expanding air has nowhere to go and will tear your lungs, which is probably as bad as it sounds.
This is why in scuba diving when you do an emergency ascent from depth you are supposed to make a humming noise to keep your airway open. It feels strange because the air is expanding you can keep humming all the way up and not run out of breath.
At normal pressure, there is X amount of gas dissolved in your blood.
At high pressure, there is a lot more gas dissovled (because it’s under pressure).
If you return to normal pressure too fast, the gas expands too quickly, and forms big bubbles because it can’t escape fast enough.
Big bubbles in your blood is bad.
The further down you go in the ocean, the more the water presses on you. That pressure squeezes the nitrogen bubbles that are normally harmless in your bloodstream. If you take the pressure away too fast, the bubbles expand in your blood vessels causing unimaginable pain.
Its already mostly explained, but the short and simple version… gas comes out of solution in the water in your body. Those form bubbles which basically start tearing your body tissues apart, blocking capillaries and starving cells of oxygen.
It is excruciatingly painful and causes a lot of damage.
Most comments address the bends, which is nitrogen coming out of solution, your blood that bubble of nitrogen can then get caught in a vessel causing a clot like bubble restricting blood flow.
The next fun decompression illnesses I like to present is a CAGE cerebral arterial gas embolism. Basically, said bubble of gas from my above mention get through to the heart but instead of going off to be processed by the lungs it skips chamber in the heart and goes to your brain, the bubble can cause stroke like conditions and likely just turn to the lights off.
Next up, pneumothorax is basically caused by holding your breath as you come up. Remember, 10m down to surface, the gas in your lungs will double if not released cause you wind bags to pop.
Boyles law explains more on gas and pressure if you want to know.
Gas in your ears, like popping them when you decend to land in a plane. If you don’t pop the decending or acending, you can perforate your ear drum.
Last in my list, thankfully, it is one of the lest but is still painful. gas bubble in your tooth
Bubble expands with no escape cause you tooth to split open.
Barotrauma isn’t fun, kids. Dive to your schedule, take your safety stops, and always dive with a buddy.
It’s like a soda can. Under pressure there are no bubbles. Once you release the pressure quickly the bubbles form. Same thing happens in your body and bubbles in your blood are dangerous.
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