Florida professor spends 100 days underwater, shares the effects on the human body: 'Pretty impressive'
A Florida professor who goes by the nickname "Dr. Deep Sea" set a new world record for living underwater, breaking the old one by almost 30 days. Dr. Joseph Dituri, an associate professor at the University of South Florida, lived in a 100-square-foot underwater habitat at Jules Undersea Lodge in Key Largo for 100 days. "The psychological impact was definitely awe-inspiring, let's just put it that way. When I came back, there was so much coming at me. It was like sensory overload," Dituri said Wednesday on "The Story." "Dr. Deep Sea" shared that he would scuba dive once a day to get out of the habitat and move around. He also taught a class in biomedical engineering while he was living underwater. UNDERWATER CEMETERY FOUND OFF DRY TORTUGAS NATIONAL PARK "It was terrific teaching hyperbaric stuff in a hyperbaric environment. How cool!" he told anchor Martha MacCallum. Dituri explained that his medical team had preliminary findings about the effects spending 100 days underwater had on the human body. "These are preliminary indications at this point, but initial indications suggest that I dropped about 70 points in my cholesterol. My inflammatory markers in my body are cut by half. My oxidative stress is cut by two-thirds. And, you know, my coherence is up pretty significantly. Not quite a standard deviation, but almost. So what that says is basically I'm able to think and rationalize thoughts better now," he said. JOINT VENTURE BUILDING UNDERWATER SPACE STATION TO STUDY MARINE LIFE, CLIMATE CHANGE "By and large, a positive impact on my focus. Now, remember, this is all preliminary data and we're trying to work towards an answer. It's about tens of thousands of pieces of data. You know, we did electrocardiograms, electroencephalograms, pulmonary function tests, blood, urine, saliva. I mean, so there are many, many data points that I still need to go through to figure out exactly what happened. But the preliminary findings are pretty impressive." Dituri added that the thing he missed the most while being underwater was the sun. "I have been trying to soak up as much vitamin D as possible," he said.