Sebastian Murat was recently in Amed, Bali, while preparing for his 703 ft no limits world record attempt.

Knowing that Sebastian Murat is not really an exponent of the Yogic school of free-diving I was expecting an uber-focused competitive athlete.  It was a pleasure to hang out  with Seb and see how little he is focused on the numbers.

I have always wanted to to put some questions to him regarding his intense research into the Mammalian Dive reflex. Our conversations were quite long and meandering so I’m not going to offer a transcript here.

Just some of the interesting points as I see them.One thing that I was particularly interested in was that since he started training using FRC techniques Seb has had no incidents of lung endema (squeeze) that he is aware of. This coincided with giving up on lung packing. Something we looked into in a previous blog

Basically the question is why would one dive with less air, especially on extremely deep dives.

The simple answer is that the MDR is stronger, which means that the body is more efficient in it’s use of O2. In Seb’s view this increased MDR balances the fact of going down with less air.

Another benefit is the lack of Nitrogen Narcosis at extreme depth and lesser likelihood of Shallow Blackout on reaching the surface. The decreased expansion of the lung volume upon surfacing means there is a less dramatic drop in air and blood. With a strong MDR there is also increased brain cooling which reduces O2 consumption.

Which is something that Seb is spending a lot of time doing these days, researching the cooling effect on the brain and exploring the MDR as a short term hibernation. A lot of Seb’s energy these days goes into medical research, something which is great for the rest of us.

I want to come back to some of this stuff in greater detail in another blog. To see how Seb is doing check the french job website.

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