Questions tagged [breathing]
The physiological process of inhaling and exhaling air for the purpose of gas exchange in the lungs.
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Why can't fish extract oxygen from air?
I've read many posts here and elsewhere for example:
Wikipedia where breathing is well described, but does not answer the question (or anything close.)#
Wikipedia Gills, more specific, but still ...
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max % of oxygen not harmful for breathing?
Is breathing pure oxygen bad for you?
Human blood is designed to capture oxygen and safely bind it to a molecule known as hemoglobin. However, if you breathe in a high concentration of oxygen, it will ...
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Why does hyperventilation make you feel like you need to breathe more?
Calm Clinic claims:
"The problem is that hyperventilation makes your body feel like you're not getting enough oxygen. Essentially, it makes you feel like you need to take deeper breaths and take ...
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Are there any "good" gases which "accidentally" diffuse into the lungs and get exhaled?
The purpose of breathing is to bring oxygen into the body and to rid the body of waste gases such as carbon dioxide and excess water vapor. This is done by diffusion with the blood. I am wondering ...
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How does the human spine move during healthy deep breathing?
When I googled, I found a lot of questionable sources from various nonscientific sources about human breathing.
Is there any science about what the human spine does during healthy deep breathing? ...
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Can excessive bronchodilation increase work of breathing?
Bronchodilation is a good effect, since it allows air to pass through the airways easily, normally reducing work of breathing. However, I think that it might increase work of breathing when done ...
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Why doesn't eating affect lung capacity?
The paper Recent consumption of a large meal does not affect measurements of lung function from 2010 claims what it states in the title. However, I don't see why this would be true, as an increased ...
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What happens if we lose voluntary control of our breathing?
Breathing can be controlled voluntarily, even though it is automatic. What happens if a person loses voluntary control of their breathing? How much would it effect day-to-day life? What are its ...
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Is there any drawback to breathing deeply all the time? [closed]
Normal, relaxed breathing (eupnea) uses the external intercostal muscles. Diaphragmatic breathing (deep breathing) is more efficient because it balances the ventilation/perfusion ratio across the ...
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Why do you get dizzy when exhaling with resistance?
Why do you get dizzy when breathing out while something resists the air outflow and requires more pressure? Like when blowing up balloons or breathing out through a straw.
This even happens when ...
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Entry of particulate pollutants into the nasal cavity
NCERT Chemistry of Grade XII (India) writes
Particulate pollutants bigger than 5 microns are likely to lodge into the nasal passage, whereas particles about 10 microns enter the lungs easily.
I'm ...
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Why does water damage the lungs but amniotic fluid doesn't?
I've read that near-drowning causes lung damage due to water inhalation. How come this is not the case with amniotic fluid? Taking this further, would lukewarm purified oxygenated water cause damage (...
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How long could Jack Sparrow and Will Turner survive underwater with a row boat over their heads (Pirates of the Caribbean I)? [closed]
How long could Jack Sparrow and Will Turner survive underwater with a row boat over their heads (Pirates of the Caribbean I)?
This scene would be physically infeasible due to buoyancy issues (http://...
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Why is the partial pressure of oxygen in blood same as that in alveoli
The partial pressure of oxygen in alveoli is about 104 mmHg, after gas exchange it becomes 40mmHg. I understand that during gas exchange, the pressure gradient drives oxygen into the blood and Co2 out....
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Does the gas in blood remain constant when breathing? Is O2 and CO2 replaced by N?
Am a software dev and working on a non-scientific game that shall include "somewhat realistic" elements of the pulmonary system.
Effectively I want to roughly model the exchange of O2 and ...
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Is unihibited exhalation beneficial for someone with a contagious respiratory disease?
If someone has a contagious respiratory disease (I'll refer to as CRD - eg. COVID, FLU, etc.) I'm wondering if the process of exhaling could be beneficial for them.
My first thought is that exhaling ...
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Can any gas other than nitrogen cause decompression sickness (the bends)?
I know that our bodies use most of the oxygen we breathe in during a dive but, wouldn't our tissues, under pressure, absorb more oxygen than we need? For instance, in normal circumstances, we don't ...
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Do people need nitrogen from air for health?
Can people breath totally nitrogen-free atmosphere for a long time? I know, nitrogen is essential for life, and in big quantities, but maybe people can take it entirely from food, from proteins, etc?
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External "lungs" that process your blood the same as your real lungs do - would that stop your need for breathing?
So say your blood goes with a tube out of your body. In an external device all the chemical/biological magic would happen and it would be fed back to your body.
Of course this doesn't exist (yet), but ...
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Do airsacs contract and expand when birds breathe? [closed]
Something I was wondering. When birds breathe, do their airsacs contract and expand like the lungs do?
Also, if they do, do they contract and expand as much as the lungs do?
Thanks so much!
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How long to breathe (the equivalent of) all of the atmosphere? [closed]
I have done some rough calculations of how long it might take humanity: approx 80,000 years (that's taking Earth's population as 7.5 billion, 11,000 litres a day of breathing, the weight of 1 litre of ...
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What is the duration between: the moment we stop breathing and to body's and involuntary mucle movement? [closed]
I studied that if someone stops breathing by pressing their nostrils with fingers and start to starve without oxygen, the body will automatically cause the hands to leave the nostrils in a certain ...
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What does FETCO2(end-tidal fraction CO2 concentration) represent?
What is end-tidal fractional CO2 concentration? I have searched online and found little actually explaining what this measurement is. Thanks again.
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How to estimate oxygen consumption of an average human during different activities?
I've tried to find some resource on the internet but had little luck. I'm looking to see if there's any data on average oxygen consumption of average to well trained humans during different activities....
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Are the IRV and ERV equal in amount?
I am reading about Inspiratory Reserve Volume and Expiratory Reserve Volume in my textbook. So my general question is aren't the two terms show the same amount of air ?
I would like to tell you why I ...
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Why does exhaled air still contain oxygen?
If the partial pressure of oxygen in the atmosphere is 159 mmHg and that inside human alveoli is 104 mmHg, and if these values are fixed or don't change very much, then why does exhaled air have ...
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Deliberately choosing one nostril to breathe through
James Nestor, on pp. 41-42 of his book Breath: the New Science of a Lost Art, claims the following.
The right nostril is a gas pedal. When you're inhaling primarily through this channel, circulation ...
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Exhalation in human breath, through mouth or nose: which is most usual?
Until now I believed that breath exhalation through the mouth is common for most human beings, and this fact is implicit in several technical contexts of which I can think (sports, music, medical ...
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Gastric and intestinal gas exchange
A very long time ago, I happened across research into using an oxygenated liquid in the stomach and or intestinal cavity. I wondered what further results came about of that research, and am having ...
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Is breathing a reflex action or is it an intrinsic process?
The process of breathing is controlled by respiratory centers in the brain stem. Do these centers have an innate activity, i.e., just send out signals to breathing muscles intrinsically, and have the ...
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How lungs can inhale and exhale? [closed]
I know that lungs are extended and compacted by muscles to create partial vacuum to breath in, or to create elevated pressure to breath out. But one thing seems not right to me...
As far as I know, ...
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How does chest wall compliance affect functional residual capacity (FRC)?
The functional residual capacity is made up of expiratory reserve volume (ERV) plus the residual volume (RV) - i.e. the volume of air remaining in the lungs after passive expiration.
Compliance of ...
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Are there land animals that use gill-like organs instead of lungs?
Among aquatic, water-breathing animals, gills and other continuous-flow breathing methods dominate over lungs and other storage-based breathing methods as in land animals. Notably, axolotls have gill-...
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Can all animals breathe manually?
Originally I was pondering about why we have the ability to breathe manually. I couldn't think of any tangible advantage, given that the body can develop mechanisms to regulate the rate of breathing ...
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Lungs permeability
My question is:
$O_2$ and $CO_2$ pass to (in & out) the bloodstream due to difference in partial pressure and its permeability to those gases (I suppose that's why no $N_2$ passes). So, to what ...
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What is a deep exhalation/inhalation?
I tried to find the academic definition of deep exhalation/inhalation but found nothing special.
I speculate that the correct definition is as follows:
• Deep ...
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Formula for Oxygen Consumption for Atlantic Salmon (Mathematical) - insecurities regarding variable
The oxygen is calculated in mg per kg per something, so what does $h^{-1}$ stand for? hours maybe?
The formula given below is an estimation of oxygen consumption for Atlantic salmon
\begin{...
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How much oxygen does a human need to breathe?
So, I know that the title isn't very precise, but so is my current knowledge of the subject. It begs the question of what unit are we talking or maybe percentage? Let me explain the situation.
Earth'...
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How is breathing involuntary if the muscles that control it are skeletal?
How is breathing involuntary if the muscles that control it are skeletal? Breathing is involuntary. However, the muscles that control it are skeletal: intercostal muscles and the diaphragm. Are there ...
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What are the sources of molecular hydrogen in human breath?
In the BBC News article CES 2019: Tech preview of the expo's hottest new gadgets there is a new product that one can use to measure the hydrogen in ones breath, and this is supposed to have some ...
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What's the relationship between oxygen consumption and ambient oxygen concentration for a lobster?
I was looking at a research paper by Thomas (1954) and came across a graph with ambient oxygen concentration plotted against oxygen consumption rate of a European lobster kept in water.
As we can see,...
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How does fish breath under water? [closed]
How we will describe the whole mechanism of fish breathing under water? How they absorb oxygen and and then remove oxygen through a process known as gas exchange?
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How is CO2 and O2 separated in our body during breathing?
https://www.msdmanuals.com/home/lung-and-airway-disorders/biology-of-the-lungs-and-airways/exchanging-oxygen-and-carbon-dioxide
The image in the above link shows that CO2 and O2 both pass through the ...
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Why doesn't it feel suffocating when taking a shower? [closed]
When one walks into a bathroom where someone is (or just finished) taking a shower it is hard to breathe, because it's filled with steam, yet the person taking a shower can breathe just fine despite ...
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How long could a shark breathe pepsi?
Sharks breathe seawater. Seawater isn't 100% pure water, but mostly water. Pepsi (other colas are available) isn't 100% pure water, but mostly water.
How long would a shark be able to breathe if ...
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Is too much CO2 in the air toxic?
I know that if there is too much CO2 in the air we will have too much greenhouse effect.
I would like to know if there is too much CO2 in the room, something like 3% while there is also more that ...
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Why can't we kill ourselves by holding our breath?
Is it possible to kill yourself by holding your breath?
This question is obviously copied from Quora, but I had heard it as a fact that we cannot kill ourselves by holding our breath and I'm looking ...
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How can diving with 100% oxygen not destroy your lungs? [closed]
It is possible this should be moved to physics, depending on the nature of the answer (i.e. if the reason is physical). But I suspect the explanation is biological, so I posted it here.
Sometimes ...
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Are nosebleeds unique to humans?
Are there other species that get nosebleeds? If so, do they occur for the same reasons that humans get nosebleeds? How would an animal stop a nosebleed?
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Why does the pulmonary artery have higher glucose concentration than the pulmonary vein?
If the pulmonary artery have higher glucose concentration than the pulmonary vein, does it mean glucose will be consumed during gas exchange?
That confused me because gas exchange is something like ...
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