Extreme Research

My work in extreme physiology, or environmental physiology, is the study of how the human body works during exposures to extremes in the environment - cold, heat, altitude, immersion, high G-forces, injury states, exercise, weightlessness, high and low air pressures, how to perform better in these environments, and other work which funding sources have gone out of their way to meticulously ignore. My scientific interest  began as a child as I sat in the snow in winter, watching my grandfather, the oldest member of the "Icebergs" walk barefoot over the ice to go ocean swimming every day.

 

Photo of Dr. Bookspan by CDR Jim Caruso, MC, US Navy Undersea Medical Officer         

Fixing Injury and Pain Research

My career as research physiologist took me to military, university, and top training centers from undersea to mountaintop to jet cockpit. I was given the toughest assignments to find why common training and rehabilitation methods don't work, and what does. Strong brave men got hazardous duty pay just to have a day with me. Methods I developed are the ones that are learned in school by doctors, trainers, physical therapists, Navy divers, chamber operators, combat swimmers, police and military, and top athletes. Doctors, and instructors yoga, PIlates, Alexander technique and others have all come to me as patients to find out why they have back and other pain and what to do about it. I was the first person to develop fitness programs aboard cruise ships, and was told it would "never catch on."

 

Diving and Extreme Environment Research

Since I was a child, I wanted to study science under the sea. I grew up to study decompression physiology, diving maneuvers and countermeasures for SEAL teams and combat swimmers, oxygen toxicity and exercise during submersion. I lived and worked in laboratories underwater, competed in cold water middle distance swims, taught SCUBA, studied the Ama-San diving women of Japan, and researched barometric effects on human performance. I have studied combat swimmers and done extreme swims with them for fun. For military survival protocols, I blasted pilots in ejection towers and spun them in centrifuges and other scientific thing-a-ma-bobs. I put men in vats of freezing water to see how we can keep pilots alive after bail-outs and how to get covert swimmers to their objective, and, I found out, an entire separate topic to get them back again.

A good book for divers is my Diving Physiology in Plain English. Suitable for all levels of diver, dive instructor, and others interested in scuba medicine and science. See it on the BOOKS page of this web site.

Physicians who want a handy review and summary of all hyperbaric medicine, and to prepare for board exams in hyperbarics, can try my book Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine Review For Physicians. Chamber techs and nurses saw the physicians book and asked for their own separate edition to prepare for certification and know their stuff - Hyperbaric Medical Review For Board Certification Exams, CHT/CHRN. See it on the BOOKS page of this web site.

I am working on a public education program to educate about diving and hyperbarics. Watch this space. Qualified practitioners are invited to apply to contribute in their specialty.


Are there not... Two points in the adventure of the diver:
One --when a beggar, he prepares to plunge?
Two -- when a prince, he rises with his pearl?
I plunge!
-- Robert Browning

Dr. Jolie Bookspan lived and dived with
the Ama of Japan



(yes, click the penguin to see who Jolie is)

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