Breathing Facts

Breathing is a constant, involuntary activity that humans do, occupying both waking and sleeping hours. Since we spend so much time breathing, you would think that we would have an intimate familiarity with why and how we breathe, but that is probably not the case for a majority of people. These facts should give you a little more information about what exactly is going on in your respiratory system.

How Much Do We Breathe?

The answer to this question is simple; we breathe a lot and we breathe frequently. When looking just at frequency, a typical person takes around 21,600 breaths in a single day. That's easy enough to imagine, as you're breathing all the time. A fact that might surprise you more is the quantity that we breathe. For normal function, the human body needs 88 pounds of oxygen each day, a substantial portion of most people's body weight. Given that oxygen is not a solid, tangible object, it is strange to think of the degree to which the gas can accumulate.

What Components Are Involved in Breathing?

Between the mouth (or nose) and the lungs, there are several other steps that allow for respiration to take place. After going through the larynx, oxygen enters the trachea, which is the tube that goes into the chest cavity. The trachea forks off into the bronchi, two smaller tubes that, in turn, divide to become the bronchial tubes. These smaller tubes connect to the 600 million alveoli, tiny sacs in the lungs with capillaries around them. Finally, the oxygen in absorbed into the bloodstream through the capillaries and from there goes to nourish the rest of the body.

What Breathing Accomplishes

Proper breathing is an essential part of optimal brain function. The brain, despite being a very small fraction of total body weight, is the destination of about one-quarter of the oxygen that the lungs inhale. Breathing is also instrumental in expelling waste from the body. Generally people think of the excretory system as being the primary actor in this task, but they forget about the amount of carbon dioxide we exhale with each breath. By releasing carbon dioxide from the body, the respiratory system actually is responsible of getting rid of 70 percent of the body's waste, compared to three percent attributed to feces.

Better Breathing

When we were young children, we did our best breathing, using strong abdominal support for our breaths. Unfortunately as time goes on, we slowly lose this tendency toward healthy breathing, until by adulthood we have breathing that is weak and shallow. People who strive to sing professionally or swim at a competitive level must learn to return to the deep breathing of childhood. Exercises with this kind of deep breathing have also been found to diminish the effects of generalized anxiety disorders and depression, among other conditions.

Breathing Methods