Pigs wearing heated diving suits and diapers reveal a better way to beat 'the bends'

Deep-sea divers take careful measures to avoid "the bends," a painful condition where gas bubbles form in divers' blood and tissues when they ascend from the depths too quickly.

Now, a new study using unlikely test subjects — pigs in diving suits — has shown that switching up the gas they breathe underwater may help divers avoid this dreaded decompression sickness.

One day, the lessons from the research may help humans dive deeper for longer and get back to the surface more quickly, the study authors say.

The work was published Aug.

10 in the journal PNAS .

Study co-author Dr.

Richard Moon , an anesthesiologist and professor of medicine at Duke University, has treated many cases of decompression sickness over his career.

He's even suffered from mild cases of the bends himself.

While Moon only experienced slight joint pain in these instances, serious cases of decompression sickness can be fatal, blocking blood flow around the body and damaging the heart and other organs.

The trouble begins with the gases divers breathe to stay alive underwater.

Diving pioneers like Jacques Cousteau, who went underwater while breathing compressed air, noted the confusion and elation they felt during extended dives, calling it the "rapture of the deep." What they were truly feeling was the effects of nitrogen narcosis ; this side effect of breathing nitrogen at high pressures makes divers feel drunk.

Divers who ascended rapidly would be beset with severe cramps that doubled them over in agony.

These cramps came from bubbles of nitrogen that had dissolved in their blood and tissues in the deep ocean.

When the divers ascended too quickly, the dissolved gas started bubbling out, and their bodies essentially became shaken-up cans of soda.