Cold Water Swimming Affects

Cold water immersion diuresis (urination) is common to cold water swimmers and is the strong desire to pee after (and sometimes during) swimming in cold water.

Marathon swimming requires one to overcome this 'societal faux pas' as a matter of time in the water but as the article points out, it is critical in replenishing liquids (hydration) and nutrients for fuel.



As we have now discussed many times, swimming in cold water leads to peripheral vasoconstriction, by the cold of the water leaching away the heat of the blood vessels closer to the surface. The blood vessels constrict resulting in reduction of blood flow in the body’s extremities to conserve heat in the cold.

This reduction in blood flow to the periphery therefore actually leads to a quick increase in blood pressure. The body attempts to compensate for this increase in arterial blood pressure by relieving itself of liquid elsewhere. The easiest, quickest and least costly expenditure from a metabolic (energetic) point of view is urine. So you will often find as cold swimmers do, that walking into cold water even before you are fully immersed, you will develop a sudden urge to urinate caused by this blood pressure increase. And during a swim liquid also builds up in the bladder but without practice, they are unable to urinate in really cold water while swimming, many swimmers, even very experienced cold water swimmers will have to stop or momentarily pause to urinate.

When you exit the water the demand to urinate can reach quite powerful levels as the muscles finally relax.

A consequence of this increased urination often forgotten is mild dehydration. Marathon swimmers in cold water, such as the English Channel are taking most of their food as liquid carbohydrates. The volume of water needed or used is generally close to one litre an hour, and because of cold diuresis, more of the liquid processed by the kidney, instead of being absorbed back as is normal, goes to the bladder. Part of this mechanism is that the cold suppresses the production of ADH, aka vasopressin, the anti-diuretic hormone that suppresses diuresis (urination). The swimmer urinates more, so the swimmer needs more liquid to compensate for the mild dehydration. And you have a self-sustaining cycle as long as the swimmer is immersed in tolerable cold water.

This article was reprinted from Lone Swimmer, a great resource.

Marathon Swimmers - Deciphering between cervical neck impingement and cardiac disease

The true test of ones resilience. Listen to your body and get a full stress test.

I recently took a breather from my 2011 English Channel attempt and training to let my cervical neck impingement calm down to some 'normal state' as a test to see if swimming itself, and the resulting wear and tear on my body was the cause of my symptoms - warm tingling sensations between my shoulder blades, across the outside of my shoulders and neck. 

After these symptoms calmed down, and I began to really listen to my body, something else was amiss. These sensations when I exercised even a little bit were now also in my left front chest pectoral region and sometimes dropped down to my inside left and right elbow or even to the inside palm of my hand. A burning sensation at the back of my throat from time to time seemed linked with the amount of food I ate and led me to discuss this with my doctor, who is very good and put me on a standard OTC prescription for GERD. He already had known about the neck issues and we all thought this was it. 

During my EC training I had taken heavy loads of NSAID's and then switched to Celebrex for the cervical neck impingement pain and assumed this and the intense nutritional food loading, supplements, highly concentrated carbo diet we marathon swimmers consume probably led to tearing up my stomach lining. So we went merrily along and as my annual physical came along plus turning 50 years old we decided to get a full stress test. 

WOW a big surprise was waiting for me. 

After 13 minutes on the tread mill, my aerobic capacity and conditioning would not allow my heart rate to max out (I only got up to 148 out of the prescribed 170 I recall) at the prescribed maximum so they kept going and effectively ran me into the floor. Finally giving in (thinking that Nurse Hatchet & Attila the Hun were running the machine I am a swimmer, not a runner) I stopped. 

A testament to my training, my resting heart rate after one minute was back to 72. But in those 13 plus minutes they detected a flutter and moments later saw the telltale evidence on the X ray scope that I had some cardiac event.

 Referencing my earlier blog posts on cervical neck impingement issues, I want to share my near miss and trio of symptomatic cross-references between my newly diagnosed cardiac 'walking angina' which I will undergo an angiogram procedure this Friday for complete evaluation and the earlier reported cervical neck problems (c 4-7).

What is relevant to the marathon swimming community is the overlap of symptoms between cardiac situations, GERD and cervical neck impingement's and ignoring these in favor of assuming its the training and bio-mechanical stress on your body, DON'T!.

All result in discomfort, tingling, a fuzzy warm sensations across the same area as noted above I have learned. For me personally, I would not describe this as 'pain' but then again as a marathon swimmer pain in these areas from training, age and competition masks goes with the territory.

So Friday with my health care professionals leading the way, I embark on a journey that will take me to the 'heart of the matter' no doubt testing my resilience along the way then to cervical neck repairs perhaps with an eye on returning to the English Channel and open water swimming.

The Daily News of Open Water Swimming: The Paradox Of Exercise: Don MacDonald pointed out statistics to English Channel swimmers that indicate endurance athletes who exercise for 3 hours or more have an ...