Your Amazing Airways.

Our lungs and airways have some amazing capabilities.

Here are a just a few:

FACT: Your trachea is lined with 19 rings of cartilage to keep it from collapsing.

FACT: Your right lung has 3 lobes, while the left lung has only 2 lobes.

Why? Because your heart is positioned further to the left side.

FACT: If you were to flatten out the surface of  all your alveoli,

the area could easily cover 160 square meters!  That’s huge!

FACT: Males have a larger total lung capacity than females. (Sorry, Ladies!!!)

FACT: Everyday our bodies lose about 1/2 Liter of water, just from exhaling!

(Drink that water, PEEPS!)

FACT: Inside our airways are hair like extensions called CILIA,

that beat in unison at a fast rate to remove mucus.

Cigarette smoking paralyzes these cilia,

which cause a smoker to have a persistent cough.

FACT: 30% of the your total lung capacity NEVER leaves the body.

This is called a Residual Volume.

FACT: The fail safe trigger to make you breathe is NOT a lack of oxygen.

It is a high level of Carbon Dioxide which is detected by your medulla oblongata!

FACT: Muscle fibers wrapped around your bronchus constrict during an asthma attack.

No wonder your chest feels so tight!!!

FACT: A “collapsed lung” usually is a term for free air in the pleural space AROUND the lung. 

It often occurs with chest trauma injuries for adults, but can also happen spontaneously in adults and infants.