Helping You Breathe
A lesser spoken issue with lake swimming...
On the Ruby Fresh website we stock a product called Rocket Fuel.
Why are we stocking Rocket Fuel - a product made to clear the airways - on the Ruby Fresh Open Water Swimming website you may be asking yourself?
In what possible way is this product applicable to swimming?
Many lakes in New Zealand are now afflicted with ‘lake snow’ or Lindavia Intermedia to give it its official name. It’s a diatom. Clumps of these diatoms, combined with other algae which grows on it so it turns green, are suspended in the water column and look like harmless pretty snowflakes hence the nice innocuous sounding name. It arrived in Lake Wanaka about 2004, from the Washington region of the USA, so about 20 years ago, give or take. The organism only lives in very clean waters (oh the irony). Out of the water the clumps resemble a goopy strandy mucusy globule and hence its other not so flattering name of ‘lake snot’. It sticks to fishing lines whilst trawling for trout. Sticks to swimmers on their eyebrows and cheeks, chests or anywhere some wispy body hair can grab it after a decent swim, say over a 2km is when it becomes noticeable. It gets sucked up into the domestic water intakes around the lake and ultimately clogs the filters of domestic appliances. It's an ongoing (and expensive) engineering problem for the council. It's a real nuisance but is not harmful when drunk and ingested. It has no taste.Â
So what's the problem? Over the summer months or at least with the lake temperature at around 14°C and upward, it seems to affect the sinus of some swimmers after a long swim. Not everybody is susceptible but after a say, 1.5km swim or longer, and, after a period of time has past, post swim - up to 8 or 10 hours later, the sinus and hence the nose gets all bunged up. It’s so bad for some people it is on the verge of making going for a beautiful calm enjoyable swim in the lake really not worth it. The downside of the bunged up sinus is worse than the upside of the swim. It certainly makes you stop to consider. But it isn’t a problem when the water is colder - from about 13°C and below.
This has not really been talked about much. We are making a connection that one of the outcomes of lake snow being you get all stuffed up in the sinus after swimming during the summer in lake snow / lindavia rich water.Â
Is it the lake snow (the diatoms) causing the blocked sinus, as in the chemical composition of the Lindavia diatom; is it the other algae stuck to the diatom the cause of the issue; or is it the size of the combined particulate? Do the thousands (or millions and billions) of approx 25µm (micrometer) diameter diatoms simply love the warm recesses of the honeycomb sinus regions in the cheek bone and mandibles and feed and grow over the hours after the swim and bung you up? Or is there a type of immune reaction by the body in the honeycomb sinus to the tiny particulates (diatoms/algae) which start a reaction to combat the intruders with the same bunged up outcome? These are all possible ideas floating around my mind.Â
Presumably (on my part) the coldness of the water over the colder months stops the diatom/algae doing what it does and that's why it's not an issue swimming in colder waters - over the winter and the shoulder season swim periods. But I’m fully surmising here…
Swimming in other lakes, such as the glacier tinged blue ones, which apparently don't have Lindavia diatoms but do contain silica, also causes the issue. So maybe it's a ‘size of particle’ issue? The silica particulate causes the sinus reaction and issues in such lakes… ?
And I have not always had a problem with it. It seems to have become a problem in the last 6 - 7 years. About the same period where we, the swimmers of Lake Wanaka, have been noticing visual clarity changes. So you can see there are quite a few variables here. Comments on this are very welcome…
Whatever…Â
The point of all this is the outcome is the same - blocked sinus! And it is unpleasant. And to fix it many options have already been tried including nose clips!
Rocket Fuel from Savvy Touch does not stop the cause of the sinus blockage. That is a bit of an unknown, as you have read and I'm still working out the parameters. But Rocket Fuel sure fixes the effect and for me that is something not so very far away from magic.Â
Further Reading:
https://www.doc.govt.nz/news/media-releases/2021-media-releases/lake-snow-a-threat-this-summer/
https://www.orc.govt.nz/managing-our-environment/pest-hub/aquatic/lake-snow