Oxygen only plays a small part in our breathing. Children and women are faster breathers than men because their breathing rate is higher 1. Humans exhale up to Anyone can get lung disease. Take 2 minutes to check in with your lungs.
Check your lungs. There are about million alveoli in your lungs and if you stretched them out, they would cover an entire tennis court. Now that's a load of alveoli! Each alveolus say: al-VEE-oh-luss — what we call just one of the alveoli — has a mesh-like covering of very small blood vessels called capillaries say: KAP-ill-er-ees. These capillaries are so tiny that the cells in your blood need to line up single file just to march through them.
Every time you inhale air, dozens of body parts work together to help get that air in there without you ever thinking about it. As you breathe in, your diaphragm contracts and flattens out. This allows it to move down, so your lungs have more room to grow larger as they fill up with air.
And the diaphragm isn't the only part that gives your lungs the room they need. Your rib muscles also lift the ribs up and outward to give the lungs more space.
At the same time, you inhale air through your mouth and nose, and the air heads down your trachea, or windpipe. On the way down the windpipe, tiny hairs called cilia say: SILL-ee-uh move gently to keep mucus and dirt out of the lungs. The air then goes through the series of branches in your lungs, through the bronchi and the bronchioles. The air finally ends up in the million alveoli.
As these millions of alveoli fill up with air, the lungs get bigger. It's the alveoli that allow oxygen from the air to pass into your blood. All the cells in the body need oxygen every minute of the day. Oxygen passes through the walls of each alveolus into the tiny capillaries that surround it.
The oxygen enters the blood in the tiny capillaries, hitching a ride on red blood cells and traveling through layers of blood vessels to the heart. The heart then sends the oxygenated filled with oxygen blood out to all the cells in the body. Explore this Health Topic to learn more about how the lungs work, our role in research and clinical trials, and where to find more information.
Your lungs lie on each side of your heart inside your chest cavity. The right lung is divided into three lobes sections , and the left lung is divided into two lobes. Your left lung is slightly smaller than your right lung, since your heart takes up some space on the left side.
When you breathe in, air enters your airways and travels down into the alveoli air sacs in your lungs. This is where gas exchange takes place. Your lungs. Your lungs are two spongy organs in your chest. The left lung is divided into two lobes and the right lung is divided into three lobes. All rights reserved.
The circulatory system, which is made up of the heart and blood vessels, supports the respiratory system by bringing blood to and from the lungs. The circulatory system helps to deliver nutrients and oxygen from the lungs to tissues and organs throughout the body and removes carbon dioxide and waste products. Other body systems that work with the respiratory system include the nervous system, lymphatic system , and immune system.
The airways are pipes that carry oxygen-rich air to the alveoli in your lungs. They also carry the waste gas carbon dioxide out of your lungs. The airways include these parts of your body:. Breathing air into your lungs. The windpipe divides into two bronchial tubes, or bronchi, then branches into smaller bronchioles. The bronchioles end in tiny air sacs, called alveoli. Here the oxygen you inhale passes into the bloodstream, and carbon dioxide from your body passes out of the bloodstream into the air in your lungs.
The carbon dioxide is expelled from your body when you exhale. Air first enters your body through your nose or mouth, which moistens and warms the air since cold, dry air can irritate your lungs. The air then travels past your voice box and down your windpipe. Rings of tough tissue, called cartilage, acts as a support to keep the bronchial tubes open. Inside your lungs, the bronchial tubes branch into thousands of thinner tubes called bronchioles.
The bronchioles end in clusters of tiny air sacs called alveoli. Your lungs have about million alveoli. Normally, your alveoli are elastic, meaning that their size and shape can change easily. Alveoli are able to easily expand and contract, because their insides are coated with a substance called surfactant. Surfactant reduces the work it takes to breathe by helping the lungs inflate more easily when you breathe in and preventing the lungs from collapsing when you breath out.
Each of these alveoli is made up of a mesh of tiny blood vessels called capillaries. The capillaries connect to a network of arteries and veins that move blood through your body. The pulmonary artery and its branches deliver blood to the capillaries that surround the alveoli. This blood is rich in carbon dioxide and low in oxygen.
Carbon dioxide moves from the blood into the air inside the alveoli. At the same time, oxygen moves from the air into the blood in the capillaries. How does my body protect the airways from food or bacteria? When you swallow, a thin flap of tissue called the epiglottis covers your windpipe. Along with coughing and gag reflexes, the epiglottis prevents food and drink from entering the airway.
The epiglottis also helps direct food into your esophagus, which is the pipe that goes to your stomach. Except for the mouth and some parts of the nose, the airways have cells that make mucus, a sticky substance that coats the walls of the airways.
Other cells in the airways have hairlike structures called cilia. The cilia and mucus trap germs and other particles that enter your airways when you breathe in air. The cilia then sweep the mucus-coated germs up to the nose or mouth. From there, the germs are swallowed, coughed, or sneezed out of the body. The lungs are surrounded by the pleura, a membrane with two layers. The space between these two layers is called the pleural cavity. A slippery liquid called pleural fluid acts as a lubricant to reduce friction during breathing.
The lungs are like sponges; they cannot expand get bigger on their own. Muscles in your chest and abdomen contract tighten to create a slight vacuum around your lungs. This causes air to flow in. When you exhale, the muscles relax and the lungs deflate on their own, much like an elastic balloon will deflate if left open to the air.
Damage to the nerves in the upper spinal cord can interfere with the movement of your diaphragm and other muscles in your chest, neck, and abdomen. This can happen due to a spinal cord injury, a stroke, or a degenerative disease such as muscular dystrophy.
The damage can cause respiratory failure. Ventilator support or oxygen therapy may be necessary to maintain oxygen levels in the body and protect the organs from damage. Your breathing usually does not require any thought, because it is controlled by the autonomic nervous system, also called the involuntary nervous system.
Your breathing changes depending on how active you are and the condition of the air around you. For example, you need to breathe more often when you do physical activity. Your lungs bring fresh oxygen into your body.
They remove the carbon dioxide and other waste gases that your body's doesn't need. To breathe in inhale , you use the muscles of your rib cage — especially the major muscle, the diaphragm.
Your diaphragm tightens and flattens, allowing you to suck air into your lungs. To breathe out exhale , your diaphragm and rib cage muscles relax.
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