Swimming Secrets

I don't quite understand the antipathy to saliva, which is useful in many situations. Is it the idea that saliva in the goggle cups might somehow dribble its way into the eyeballs? I am sure there is a chemical difference between saliva and tears, but I am not sure the difference is enough to brand one of these fluids revolting and the other, well, whatever tears are considered by the squeamish. Honestly, if saliva is kind of disgusting, wouldn't the last place you would want it to be is your mouth? I am not trying to be a smart alec here. I honestly don't understand. If you learned to scuba dive back in the day, and probably now, too, the idea of spitting into your mask and swazzling it around with some water, then rinsing, was just how we were taught to keep the mask from fogging up. As for your teeth whitening, has your commitment to swimming changed any dietary or beverage habits? Do you drink less coffee or tea perhaps? Chew on fewer beetlenuts? I haven't seen the chlorine tooth discoloration thread, and I suppose it's possible, but I don't know if you have been swimming long enough to see a noticeable difference. I know people who have used whitening strips for years without seeing a noticeable difference, so it's hard to imagine swmming would change things, positively or negatively, in months.

There's bacteria in saliva. You don't want to put that in your eyes and risk infection.

Why use spit when you could use Cat Crap {TM}? www.buckmans.com/.../Cat-Crap-Goggle-Care-Kit-OSCARItem_294=6155.aspx Keeps all goggles clear. They say.

I spit in my goggles to clean them out. No eye infections yet. When I get one, I will stop. My nose used to get runny sometimes during practice. In high school we had gutters that were pretty deep so we could just "snot rocket" into them.

Hmm. Speaking of brushing and flossing, does chlorine make your teeth whiter? Because in the months since I started swimming, I could swear my teeth have gotten whiter. I have the whitest teeth in my family now. Anyway... secrets in my swimming... I have not peed in the pool. Yet. Sometimes during backstroke, instead of just letting all that annoying phlegm wash all over my lower face I just hawk it all back and spit it out. I'm good at getting it to go pretty high, like past the flags. Don't blanche! I don't do it very often, just when I'm rested enough and breathing is not enough of a hassle that I can actually, you know, do it. Once, in this shallow 3-ft. pool that I practice at, I used the bottom to speed up my backstroke so impressively that everyone was looking at me. It seems that my dirty secrets occur during backstroke... Someone told me that saliva keeps goggles from fogging up. I still refuse to do such a thing as lick the insides of them though.

I spit in my goggles to clean them out. No eye infections yet. When I get one, I will stop. You betcha! (Tu betchus!) Eye is portal to the brain. Knew a guy that got an eye infection. In 48 hours he was blind, another 48 dead. Brain gone. It wasn't his own bug; it was hospital-acquired. Still.

You betcha! (Tu betchus!) Eye is portal to the brain. Knew a guy that got an eye infection. In 48 hours he was blind, another 48 dead. Brain gone. It wasn't his own bug; it was hospital-acquired. Still. GROSS! I think I will stick to snot rockets.:)

I lick the insides of my goggles to keep them from fogging. :D It does work. In my defense, I also wash my goggles frequently with soap.

Darn. So I'm supposed to have yellower teeth, then? I don't know if I'm more disappointed about that or the fact that I now still don't know the answer to this little mystery about why they're getting whiter. I'll probably start licking my goggles sometime. Just not... now.

I find it hard to believe that bacteria in your mouth can cause eye infections. Let me quickly google this... Okay! I found this tip: Don't spit into eye cosmetics. The bacteria in your mouth may grow in the cosmetic and subsequent application to the eye may cause infection. www.healthline.com/.../wl-old-makeup-can-cause-serious-eye-infections I still think you're safe, especially if you rinse the goggles briefly and just use a salivary film... Let me check The Google one more time: Plain old saliva is an effective defogger on a reasonably clean mask, but is not effective on a really greasy mask. scuba.club.anu.edu.au/.../fogging.php Finally: Originally posted by Uncle Pug Walter my understanding is that you won't get infections from your own spit. Yeah, I would guess it would be a pretty remote chance of occurring but I suppose it could happen. Heck, I've actually put one of my contact lenses in my mouth to re-wet it once while out hiking when I got dirt in my eye. I then put it back in my eye and never got an infection. Maybe I had clean spit that day. LOL:out: www.scubaboard.com/.../t-4672.html