Role of Oxygen in human body and the basis for life – 3

You know that sneezing is the body’s way of getting rid of something that’s irritating the nose.  With coordinated precision the irritant is sneezed out. 

The two openings of the airway that is the nasal cavity and the mouth meet at the pharynx or throat at the back of the nose and mouth.  The pharynx which is a part of the digestive system as well as the respiratory system carries both food and air.  At the bottom of the pharynx, there is a pathway for both food and air and this divides in two and go a separate way.  One passageway is for food, through the esophagus which leads to the stomach and the other for air, through the epiglottis, a small flap of tissue that covers the air only passage when we swallow, keeping all the foods and liquid from going into our lungs.  That’s why since ancient times, knowledge is passed on that while eating complete what you are chewing or eating and then talk, now you know there is a reason for that, it’s because when you are eating and talking food can accidently go into the lungs and cause choking and then an emergency situation.

The voice box or larynx is the uppermost part of the air only passage and this short tube also contains a pair of vocal cords which vibrate to make sounds.  The trachea or windpipe extends downward from the base of the larynx and it lies partly in the neck and partly in the chest cavity.  The walls of the trachea are strengthened by stiff rings of cartilage to keep it open so that air that you inhale can flow through on its way to the lungs.  This trachea is also continuously lined with cilia, and it does the job of sweeping fluids and foreign particles out of the airway so that they stay out of the lungs and not cause harm to the body.  At the bottom end, the trachea divides into left and right air tubes called bronchi, which connect to the lungs.  Within the lungs, you will find that the bronchi branches out into smaller bronchi and even smaller tubes called bronchioles, which are as thin as a strand of hair, end in tiny air sacs called alveoli.  Every one of us has hundreds of millions of alveoli in our lungs — enough that will cover a tennis court if they were spread out on the ground. The alveoli is the place where the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide takes place.  With each inhalation, air fills a large portion of the millions of alveoli and in a process called diffusion, oxygen moves from the alveoli to the blood through the capillaries, which are tiny blood vessels that line the alveolar walls.  Once in the bloodstream, a molecule called hemoglobin picks up the oxygen in the red blood cells.  This oxygen-rich blood then flows back to the heart, which pumps it through the arteries to all the oxygen-hungry tissues throughout the body.  So if your hemoglobin is less, you will feel fatigued, and even lose consciousness if it goes beyond a below limit, but most of the time, your body will convey to you through some way so that you can remedy the situation of low hemoglobin and will need to consult with your doctor.

cont’d..

Role of Oxygen in human body and the basis for life – 2

As you know breathing couldn’t happen without the help from the respiratory system, including the nose, throat, voice box, windpipe and lungs.  With each breath you take in air through your nostrils and mouth, with your lungs filling up and emptying out as air is inhaled, the mucous membranes of the nose and mouth warms and humidify the air.  Normally in today’s modern environment, with cities and towns so polluted, your respiratory system have a mammoth task of filtering out foreign matters and organisms that enter through the nose and mouth.  Pollutants that are breathed or coughed out or destroyed by the digestive juices or eaten by the macrophages, a type of blood cell that patrols the body looking for germs to destroy when they are encountered inside the body.

Tiny hairs called cilia in the trachea is an important protective mechanism of the body and protect the nasal passageways and other parts of the respiratory tract by preventing them from becoming lodged in the lungs, and their job is to filter out dust and other particles that enter the nose with the breathed air.  As the air is inhaled, the cilia job is to move back and forth, pushing any foreign matter like dust away from the lungs with a coordinated sweeping action towards the nostrils where it is blown out or towards the pharynx where it travels through the digestive system and out with the rest of the body’s waste.  If the cilia fails in its duty to function, foreign bodies starts to grow bacteria that remain in the airway.  Bacteria built up in the trachea cause breathing problems, infections and other disorders.

cont'd..

Role of Oxygen in human body and the basis for life – 1

The definition of food is food is anything that your body takes in to maintain life and growth.  So strictly speaking oxygen is food.  It’s the fuel that burns the fat, source of all energy, the ignition key that makes sure that everything that body requires get done.  As oxygen is important to every cell in your body, without it, your cells can’t make energy and even a drop in oxygen requirement is one of the reason your body gets into imbalances state when the cells are deprived of oxygen, this deprivation if not corrected in time, causes illness because your cells metabolism slows down.  You switch from a highly efficient energy making machine to being less efficient and thus generate a lot of lactic acid, which builds up in your muscles and make you sore.  Without oxygen, we perform less efficiently.

Our body process requires three things to start with, food, water and oxygen.  While we might enjoy the food when hungry and water when thirsty, it’s the oxygen that actually provides the fuel that runs your body.  Oxygen, through a process called oxidation, chemically changes food and water into energy.  It’s this oxygen fire that contracts our muscles, repairs our cells, feeds our brain and even calms our nerves.  So you can see that breathing in oxygen to a required level is the first key to your body’s health and is one of our body’s chief cleansing tool.

As long as we breathe in oxygen properly and get plenty of oxygen, there is sufficient energy and the waste matter is easily eliminated.  The problem comes when we don’t take in enough oxygen.  You see, the body can store up food and water but it can’t store oxygen.  Every minute that we live, we must continually provide our cells with stream of fresh and pure oxygen.

cont’d..