If you’re a veteran scuba diver, you know the importance of safety stops, but, if you’re like most people, sometimes you may tend to get lazy and feel like one missed stop won’t really hurt you. Divers can never be too careful! You know the rules; never dive alone or beyond your training, don’t go into overhead environments, such as caves or wrecks, don’t forget to log your dives and please, don’t forget your safety stop! That little three to five minute stop could literally save your life.

Every diver knows to ascend slowly, no faster than the smallest exhaled air bubbles or 30 feet per minute, breath normally and continuously and to always stay with your buddy. If you’re doing all these things correctly, congratulations, but don’t forget to make a safety stop at 15 feet. Those three important minutes of hanging loose in the water eliminate dangerous levels of nitrogen from your body. Without this stop you put yourself at risk for decompression sickness. Decompression sickness (DCS) was first described in 1841 and called "the bends."

Symptoms of DCS include pain in the large joints, which can become excruciating, mental confusion, headache, vision problems, extreme tiredness, a blotchy skin rash, itching, seizures, dizziness, vertigo, an uncontrollable dry cough, nausea and vomiting. If the spinal cord is affected, you can have burning, tingling or stinging sensations in the lower areas of the back and chest and paralysis, which begins in the feet, ascending upward. More serious indications can include urinary and rectal incontinence, muscle weakness, a deep, burning chest pain exacerbated by breathing and shortness of breath. The only treatment for DCS, after being given oxygen, is recompression, normally done in a recompression chamber.