What happens when you get the bends?
In: Biology
The highly pressurized air you breathe from your tank underwater (mostly nitrogen-typically the same air we breath above) gets absorbed by your lungs into your bloodstream. When at depth, the gasses are dissolved in your blood.
When divers ascend, the external pressure on the body decreases, and like a bottle of soda, the gas in the tissues starts forming microscopic bubbles in the body. Ascend quickly, the bubbles get too large, too quickly and if they form in the wrong places like muscle joints or nerves, you can get physical symptoms like pain and muscle weakness.
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