Please explain why air flows into the lung during inspirations and out during expiration?

Question

It's not inHALations in what I am talking about....either that or my Medical school book is wrong....

Answer 1

sadtoday:

I'm not sure that your medical text is wrong, exactly, but are you reading it quite right?

"Inspiration" in medicine is inhalation. It comes from the Latin "Spiritus" which, as it does in English (guess where we got it and 65% of the rest of our language?), means breath, breath of life, or a high disposition.

Thus, "inspiratio" means "breathe in," which in medicine means...to breathe in.

Here's a medical website to corroborate this:

http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/medical/inspiration.htm

Thus, to "expire" means primarily "to breathe out," but since we will have a last breathing out, it also means to die.

Now, if you mean how does this breathing in and out work, if you have a medical text you must know. So I'm saying this last part only on the off chance that somehow you've missed it, not because I think you need it.

The lungs have no muscle in them. Being only organized collections of alveoli, little sacs, they need something to move them so that they may exchange the gases we make for the gases we need for metabolism.

Enter the diaphragm below the lungs, and the intercostal muscles, the ones between our ribs. As the diaphragm pulls itself downward, the chest muscles expand the chest and thus the entire pleural cavity outwards, causing a partial vacuum to form in your lungs. Air, being part of nature which abhors a vaccum as we are assured by the philosophers, rushes into the partial vaccum of the lung. This is both inspiration and inhalation. Gases are exchanged, the muscles reverse direction, and the more-carbon-dioxide-enriched air is pushed out of the lungs. The process then repeats in most living people, though I have known some whose breathing was not an indication of life. I worked for one like that.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

First, it is inHALations. It flows into the lung during inhalations because inhale means to go in, and exhale means to go out or leave

Answer 3

Oxygen enters the alveoli via the alveolar duct. Each alveolus is surrounded by a network of blood capillaries. When oxygen enters the alveolus, it flows through the wall of the alveolus, into the wall of the capillary and into the bloodstream. In return, carbon dioxide from the bloodstream enters the alveolus.

Answer 4

Your body is made up of tiny cells, each of which has a special job that keeps you alive. Every cell in your body needs a special gas called oxygen, that allows the cell to get energy from the food you eat. Oxygen in the air is brought into your lungs. That's when your blood picks it up and brings it to your cells.

Another gas, called carbon dioxide is a waste product of your cells. It is very dangerous if it builds up in your body. Your blood carries the carbon dioxide from your cells to your lungs, to let you breathe out all the bad gas!

Answer 5

Your lungs are a vacum. As your diaphram contracts, it pulls in air. As your diaphram relaxes it pushes the air out of your lungs, creating the vaccum again. Elementary.

Answer 6

Physics. It's not just a good idea, it's the law.

Answer 7

That is the way God made us.