22 Facts about Breathing Deeply
1.
The
right lung has three separate compartments.
2.
The
left lung has two compartments.
3.
Shallow
breathers (most of us) rarely use the lower lobe of our lungs.
4.
Most of
the blood circulation in our lungs is in our lower lobes.
The blood flow at the bottom of our lungs is over a litre per
minute.
5.
Most of
us breathe with the top part of our lungs where the rate of blood
flow is less than a tenth of a litre per minute.
6. We can
survive with just a few litres of air going into our lungs every
minute.
7. In a
dramatic situation our lungs, and our bodies, can breathe in, and very successfully organise over one hundred litres of air a
minute.
8. Every 24
hours we breathe approximately twenty thousand times.
9. Nearly
three-quarters of our lung (or liver or kidney) tissue can be lost
without noticing any substantive loss of function.
10.
Cigarette
smoke (smokers usually inhale deeply but don't exhale completely),
or pollution, can stay in the lower part of the lungs for the
length of time it takes us to exert ourselves (climbing stairs,
running, etc) so that we are forced to take deep breaths and
finally push out the waste products at the bottom of our lungs.
11.
"Ohana"
is the contemporary Hawaiian word for "family", but its
older meaning was "people who breathe together."
12.
"Haoles"
which is Hawaiian for "people without breath" was
the name given to missionaries when they came to the Hawaiian
Islands.
13.
Our brain uses 20-25% of our air
supply, yet is only 2% of our body's weight.
14.
If
we moved into a high altitude, our bodies would take about one to
two months to adapt. In the beginning, our red blood cells
(that normally take the oxygen from our lungs around our body)
would find that they're not getting enough oxygen from the new
surroundings. So our bodies, very sensibly, would then
create lots of new red blood cells to collect all the extra air
that is needed.
15.
A
healthy male can manage very well with a mere 5,000,000 red blood
cells per cubic millimetre of blood at sea level. However
the same man will possibly need, and create, as many as
8,000,000 red blood cells per cubic millimetre of blood to
compensate for moving to a high altitude (12,000 feet).
16.
Oxygen
is only 20% of the air we breathe. The remainder is mostly
Nitrogen with less than 1% Carbon Dioxide. Each inhalation
also contains irritants, dust and pollutants.
17. Our
noses are pollution controllers. They are designed with a
set of filters for clearing the larger particles of dust from the
air.
18. Our
mouths are not equipped for filtering air.
19. Our
lungs are covered by a lining called the pleura, and they are
lubricated by a slick substance called surfactant so that they can
slide around freely.
20. An
exhalation releases about 14% oxygen, 69% nitrogen, 5% carbon
dioxide, some water vapour and traces of other gases.
21. We
can increase the efficiency of our lungs a thousand fold by
increasing our air intake by 5% on each breath.
22. “Blessed
are the poor in spirit” is a translation. According to
scholar Neal Douglas, in its original Aramaic language it meant
“Happy and aligned with the One are those who find their home in
the breathing”.
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