Webpage Updated Tuesday June 22, 2022
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy – SCUBA – Open Water/Dive Master (PADI Certified)
Knowledge and specific applications of Hyperbaric Oxygen and gas chemistry and SCUBA Diving gas chemistry has a lot in common regarding techniques of manipulating oxygen concentrations, saturations and oxygen gas tension to achieve safe tissue and cellular oxygenation.
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT)
In the early 1980’s, Kinser was the Director/practitioner of an outpatient Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) Clinic where he managed the facility as well as treated patients using a mono-place hyperbaric chamber. The clinic provided outpatient hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) services for patients suffering from numerous conditions such as: anemia, severe brain abscess, gangrene, infection of skin or bone that causes tissue death and non-healing wounds like diabetic foot ulcers.
(HBOT) is THE TREATMENT OF CHOICE FOR commercial and sport divers afflicted with the Bends, Decompression Sickness, Caisson Disease, Divers Disease, Nitrogen Narcosis, and Rapture of the Deep that can be painful and deadly.
Breathing pure 100% oxygen at several atmospheres pressure
HBOT promotes quicker healing in areas of the body suffering from oxygen deprivation, as compared to using low concentration 21% ambient oxygen at only 1 ATM pressure.
HBOT consisted of placing patients in an air tight, sealed tube containing 100% oxygen pressurized to 3 ATM for a prescribed period of time.
Normally at 1 ATM pressure 14.7 PSI 21% oxygen in ambient air passes through the air sacs on the lung’s capillary system where the oxygen dissolved into the blood. The hemoglobin in the red blood cell carries 97% of the dissolved oxygen throughout the body, the plasma (water) carries the remaining 3% ambient oxygen.
HBOT at 3 ATM pressure is 44.1 PSI 100%. Oxygen diffuses through the air sacs, the lung’s capillary system where the high concentration of oxygen under pressure dissolves into the blood. The hemoglobin in the red blood cell carries most of the oxygen to cells throughout the body, the plasma or fluid in the blood carry substantially less oxygen than the hemoglobin in red blood cell throughout the systemic blood flow circulation.
How is oxygen transported inside the body? Ambient air contains near 21% oxygen. Normal oxyhemoglobin in ambient air is 95% – 100% saturation… same as DO saturation in fish in ambient environmental conditions exposed to air or 21% oxygen. Oxygen in ambient barometric conditions is transported from the lungs to the tissue and cells in red blood cells or erythrocytes. Erythrocytes also give blood the red color. The color of arterial blood rich in oxygen is bright red. The color of blood that is not rich in oxygen is dark red (venous blood). The color of venous and arterial blood under hyperbaric conditions, 100% oxygen is all bright red. In ambient conditions consuming ambient oxygen 21% oxygen, most oxygen (98.5 percent) carried in the blood is bound to the protein hemoglobin in red blood cells. Only 1.5 % of the oxygen is transported in serum (fluid in the blood). Under ambient conditions only a small amount of oxygen is transported in serum fluid in the blood).
Hyperbaric conditions consuming pure 100 % enables far more oxygen to be dissolved and transported in the body fluids, cerebral spinal fluid (the fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal column), bone tissue, and lymph nodes at highly supersaturated concentrations vs. O2 transport in the red blood cell. Hyperbaric oxygenation enable areas of the body tissue that is not easily accessible to whole blood, red blood cells and hemoglobin much greater access exposed to blood serum. The clear oxygen-rich fluid (plasma) in the body can then travel to areas where blood circulation blocking cells and tissue deprived of oxygen is severe. Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy also enables oxygen transport in hemoglobin to increase from 97% saturation to 100% saturation levels.
In the mid 1980’s Kinser went on to build and sell mono-place hyperbaric chambers for HBOT clinics, single patient use. Compressed medical oxygen was the source gas. Kinser also consulted with doctors prescribing hyperbaric oxygen therapy and taught the technical staff how to administer hyperbaric oxygen therapy safely.
PADI SCUBA CERTIFICATIONS
Certified Dive Master and Advanced Open Water Diver
The Beginning: Kinser’s first SCUBA diving experience was below the bridge coming from Alabama east on Hwy. 90 into Pensacola, Florida where he rented 1 tank of air, mask, fins, weight belt and made a 1 hour dive, 5 ft. deep on that sandy bottom. This was Kinser’s 1st SCUBA dive. Young Kinser was an excellent swimmer. He was proficient using mask, fins and snorkel, but had no SCUBA diving training nor basic SCUBA instructions or certification, just rent the gear from the local dive shop ($20) and go diving, no question ask, you were on your own back then. Kinser was a 14 YO high school freshman.
Kinser learned quickly that SCUBA diving would be safer and more fun with professional SCUBA training. He had no idea why his ears hurt when he was only 5 feet deep. He had no idea about the effects of depth, pressure increase, ear pain or how to fix this problem… Kinser’s first 5 foot dive using SCUBA gear was his limitation although uncomfortable because of the ear pain.
Wreck Diving
Tears later after completing PADI Certified in Open Water Diver and Advanced Open Water Diver training, Kinser continued his diving education advancing to a PADI Certified Dive Master credential. This entailed many spearfishing dive trips in the Gulf of Mexico, cave diving in Florida to open water Caribbean dives and other great wreck diving sites like Truk Lagoon (Truk Atoll), a pacific atoll well known for WW ll wrecks and wreck diving.
Kinser’s favorite type of diving is wreck diving (Operation Hailstone, Truk Atoll, February 1944) and old wrecked wooden sailing ships found throughout Caribbean islands. Finding old brass square nails, cannon shot, stone ballast and old artifacts scattered along the reef a couple miles offshore running north from the north end of Isla Mujeres, Yucatan, Mexico 20 miles to the light house at Contoy Island and spearfishing.
The Nuestra Señora de Atocha Wreck – The World’s Most Valuable Shipwreck
Mel Fisher Maritime Museum, Key West, Florida https://www.melfisher.org/
To date Kinser still reminisces not staying a few months longer and sailing with his fried and adventurer Tim Belk to Key West and working as a diver on Mel Fisher’s salvage crew when the Atocha was finally discovered and the treasure was salvaged.
In November 1984 on a hard northern cold front, Kinser and Belk sailed out of Clear Lake, Texas to Galveston 900 miles across the Gulf of Mexico to Isla Mujeres, Quintana Roo, Yucatán, Mexico and other Caribbean destinations off the east coast off the Yucatán in Belk’s Southern Cross 31 sailing vessel. The Passage across the Gulf of Mexico took 6.5 days and went well without major incident.
A month and change had passed when Kinser flew from Cancun back to Houston, Texas a few weeks later, near Christmas 1984. Kinser’s friend, Belk, then solo sailed to Key West Florida for Christmas. He decided to stay in Key West a while and obtained employed in Key West January 1985 as a substitute school teacher (Biology). After the school year ended Belk applied for a diver job with Mel Fisher, a local “Wrecker” who began salvaging the Atocha wreck early 1985. Belk was 1 of the divers on the salvage boat July 20, 1985; the day the Atocha treasure was found.
The Atocha was a Spanish treasure galleon. The most widely known vessel of a fleet of ships that sank in a hurricane off the Florida Keys in 1622. The Atocha sank September 6,1622 in approximately 17 meters (56 ft.) of water. Most of her 265 crew and passengers were lost. Three sailors and two slaves survived by clinging to the ship’s mizzen mast. The Atocha treasure was so immense that it took two months to record and load the treasure onto the ship.
The Nuestra Señora de Atocha was added to the Guinness Book of World Records 2014 as the most valuable shipwreck to be recovered, it was carrying roughly 40 tons of gold and silver, and 32 kilograms (71 lb.) of emeralds and valuable minerals.
Spearfishing
In the late 1960’s before Cancun was developed into a tourist destination, Kinser was SCUBA diving in Cozumel, Quintana Roo, Mexico. Kinser recalls asking the Mexican Dive Master, “where is the nearest hyperbaric chamber on the island?” The Dive Master smiles and responded, “on the other side of the island, El Cementerio.” The Dive Master also thought a SCUBA Dive Table Chart was used by Gringo’s to convert USD’s to Mexican pesos.
Kinser speared a 5’ barracuda in the belly on Palancar Reef, certainly not a clean, quick kill, lots of blood and thrashing around. The Mexican Dive Master was very upset with the messy kill!
He taught Kinser, “when spearing fish in open sea water, never spear a fish in the belly… head shots, quick kills only Gringo!… THRASHING WOUNDED FISH, NOISE, BLOOD IN THE WATER ATTRACTS AND EXCITES SHARKS! Kinser never forgot that valuable lesson.
Barracuda are curious fish. When hunting barracuda, be very still and decrease your breathing rate to produce less bubbles. Barracuda will swim toward you. When it is close within killing range, it will stop, turn its head to the left or right to take a close look at you with 1 eye. That is the moment to take the head-shot. Always try to make a quick kill.
See more Kinser Bio visit https://www.oxyedge-chum.com/history/