Muscle Duty

Your breathing muscles are able to survive a lifetime of perpetual motion because they have a very brief moment of rest each time you exhale and before you begin your next intake of air.

In order for you to inhale, your intercostal muscles between ribs lift your ribs slightly out and up. At the same time your diaphragm (the elastic floor of your ribcage) flattens down. This results in a slightly larger ribcage that creates an imbalance of pressure and new air is sucked in. This is the busy, working, active stage of each breath cycle.

The resting stage means that all breathing muscles simply let go and relax. The ribs drop down once more and the diaphragm domes upward into its resting position. And there we have an exhalation as the breath is squeezed out.

The distance the diaphragm must move from its domed up relaxed position when the lungs are relatively empty to the flattened position of inhalation is only about half an inch. However, this slight change of total volume is enough to move all the air you need.

Your breathing muscles also have somewhat easier duty during sleep when you tend to breathe more efficiently.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

The Extraordinary Exchange

A net of blood vessels (so fine that the blood must squeak through one cell at a time) is laced tightly around each air sac (alveolus). The alveolar walls here are as thin as soap bubbles about to burst. This ingenious design allows oxygen to pass easily from the incoming breath, through the thin shared wall of the air sac and blood vessels and finally into the blood stream.

While the blood is sucking up oxygen from the air sac, it simultaneously gives up its carbon dioxide into that same tiny sac. Carbon dioxide is spent fuel that now must be carried away in the air about to be exhaled from all alveoli.

Your blood at that point has been refreshed with a new supply of oxygen and is ready to resume its unending duties on your behalf. It is the extraordinary exchange of gases in this inner sanctum that fuels all that you do, all that you are.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

Link: The Path From Throat To Lungs

Oxygen Delivery: Where the Teeny Meets the Tiny

Your blood vessels, as they descend into your chest, get smaller and smaller until they are so narrow that blood molecules are forced to squeeze through one molecule at a time!

In the meantime your air tubes have also been getting smaller and smaller until they reach the end of the road where tiny bunches of air sacs (the alveoli) hang together like clusters of microscopic grapes.

In the very deepest part of the lungs, the tiny air sacs and the narrow blood vessels are so tightly woven together that they more or less share common walls. A blood molecule has only a fraction of a second to offload its oxygen, pick up its spent load of carbon dioxide and continue along its way. This exchange through the walls of the alveoli is what keeps you alive and kicking.

The gas exchange at this exact point in your chest is incredibly delicate and complicated. This is not an area that was designed to defend itself well. That would be like expecting a brilliant brain surgeon to do security duty at the front desk at the same time he is operating on a patient.

Remember that you have wonderful defense systems further “upstream.” Do your best to keep the bad stuff from getting past the defenses of your nose, throat and upper chest into your sanctum sanctorum.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

The Elastic Cage

Although your bony ribcage serves you well as chest armor, taken alone this assembly of bones is unable to draw in or release a single breath. To turn this bone-vessel into a breathing-machine, Nature first lays down two layers of muscle (the intercostals) that crisscross each other between adjacent ribs. One layer helps with inhalation and the other with exhalation.

In addition to the intercostals between the ribs, the multiple-muscled diaphragm stretches like a complex, elastic floor across the bottom of the cage, and serves as the most powerful and important breathing tool you have. Now your bony cage, with its strategically placed muscles, has become a powerful pump, able to move air in and out of your body, on command.

The elusive muscle floor of the diaphragm attaches around the bottom rim of the ribcage, and to the waist-level lumbar spine at the rear. This big diaphragm serves simultaneously as the elastic floor of your ribcage, and the elastic ceiling of your abdominal cage.

The constant rising and flattening action of this powerful sheath as it pumps the air in and out, gently massages the heart and lungs as it rises, and in turn, the stomach, liver, spleen and intestines as it flattens down. Absolutely amazing! We won’t spend much time with anatomy but you will be well served to have some understanding and control of your main breathing muscles.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

Sandwich Muscles I
Upside Down Breathing