The Lungs Are Nature’s Miracle Breathers
Every animal extracts oxygen from the environment in which it lives. Through their gills, fish extract oxygen from water (H2O). Insects get oxygen from the air through alveoli or air cells in individual openings set in segments of their bodies. Worms and other invertebrates breathe through the pores of their skin.
Vertebrate animals, including the human race, have those miracle mechanisms – the lungs. The mechanical equivalent would be a pair of bellows, though the lungs are far more intricate and adaptable.
Human lungs are a miracle pair of conical-shaped organs composed of spongy, porous tissue. They occupy the thoracic cavity (chest) with the heart in the center, and are protected by the amazingly strong and resilient rib cage. The apex of each lung reaches just above the collar bone; the base extends to the waistline.
What makes up our lungs? About 800 million alveoli
– air cells or sacs of elastic tissue – which can expand or contract like tiny balloons. If these little air sacs were flattened out and laid side by side, the flattened alveoli would cover an area of 100 square yards!
Tiny capillaries (blood vessels) thread the elastic walls of each of the millions of air sacs . . . and it is through these that the blood passes to discharge its load of poisonous carbon dioxide and absorb the vital, lifegiving oxygen. The average person has five to six quarts of blood, which must be cleansed continually.
Air inhaled through the nose and mouth reaches the alveoli through an intricate system of tubes, beginning with the large trachea, or windpipe, which is kept rigid by rings of cartilage in its walls. The trachea extends through the neck into the chest where it divides into two branches (bronchi), each leading into a lung cavity. Each bronchus divides into a number of successively smaller branches to bring air to every air sac.
Breathing is the first place, not the last, one should look when fatigue, disease or other evidence of disordered energy presents itself.
– Dr. Sheldon Hendler, The Oxygen Breakthrough
