The Path From Throat To Lungs

Your windpipe is a large flexible hose held open by C-shaped pieces of cartilage open toward the spine (accommodating lumps of food traveling down the adjacent esophagus). The windpipe divides in two just behind your heart, one hose descending toward your right lung and the other toward the left. At this point these two slightly smaller hoses (the main bronchi) enter your lungs, along with essential blood vessels and nerves.

Because your large muscular heart is tucked between the lungs, and is positioned slightly off to the left, things get crowded on that left side. Therefore, you have only two lobes within the left lung as well as a noticeably smaller descending bronchus. The roomier right lung has three lobes, with a larger bronchus.

The bronchial hoses now begin to divide again and again creating progressively narrower bits of hose. This bronchial branching is often described as an inverted tree. Imagine the windpipe as the trunk, the bronchi as the main branches, the progressively narrow bits of air hose as the smaller branches and stems.

By now the microscopic subdivisions of air hose have become too narrow for cartilage-ring support. At the very end of each of the smallest subdivisions of the bronchial tree is a cluster of air sacs (the alveoli). Imagine a microscopic cluster of hollow grapes growing from a tiny hollow stem. Lung tissue is made up of trillions of these microscopic clusters. The cleaned warm oxygen-rich air at this point is embraced by your blood stream.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.