Breathing pure oxygen benefits
- what happens when you breathe in oxygen
- what happens when we breathe in oxygen
- what happens when you breathe in pure oxygen
- what happens when you breathe in too much oxygen
What happens to your diaphragm when you inhale...
How Your Lungs Work
As you breathe air in through your nose or mouth, it goes past the epiglottis and into the trachea.
What do we breathe in the airIt continues down the trachea through your vocal cords in the larynx until it reaches the bronchi. From the bronchi, air passes into each lung. The air then follows narrower and narrower bronchioles until it reaches the alveoli.
Within each air sac, the oxygen concentration is high, so oxygen passes or diffuses across the alveolar membrane into the pulmonary capillary.
At the beginning of the pulmonary capillary, the hemoglobin in the red blood cells has carbon dioxide bound to it and very little oxygen (see illustration above).
How long can you breathe pure oxygen
The oxygen binds to hemoglobin and the carbon dioxide is released. Carbon dioxide is also released from sodium bicarbonate dissolved in the blood of the pulmonary capillary. The concentration of carbon dioxide is high in the pulmonary capillary, so carbon dioxide leaves the blood and passes across the alveolar membrane into the air sac.
This exchange of gases occurs rapidly (fractions of a second). The carbon dioxide then
- what happens if you breathe in oxygen
- what happens after you breathe in oxygen