UNDERSTANDING YOUR LUNGS

Understanding what's going on in your lungs can help you feel more control over your breathing. Here’s a start…
When you breathe in, air enters your body through your nose and mouth. This upper airway warms, humidifies, and filters the air you breathe. The air continues down through the trachea (windpipe), into your bronchi (airways), and into your lungs. The air we breathe on earth contains about 21% oxygen.
The walls of the alveoli are about as thin as a soap bubble. Oxygen goes through these thin walls and into the blood where it is carried throughout your body. Oxygen helps fuel all the work your body must do to stay alive, move, and get you through your day.
A healthy adult lung contains an estimated 300 million alveoli!
After your body uses the oxygen, it becomes carbon dioxide, which travels back to your lungs and is breathed out.
Your lungs have a system, hair-like sweepers called cilia, to clean out the mucus. These cilia move mucus upwards, kind of like a conveyor belt.
When smoke and other pollutants enter the lungs, the cilia are often paralyzed or destroyed. This causes airways to become swollen and narrowed. The lungs should be elastic, able to stretch and then return back to normal size. Over time, lungs with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease lose their elasticity, get big and floppy, and make it hard for you to get air out.
The lung works with the respiratory system to allow us take in oxygen and get rid of carbon dioxide; making breathing necessary for keeping us alive; damage to the lungs results in difficulty blowing air out and sometimes breathing in air, causing shortness of breath. The term lung diseases refers to many disorders affecting the lungs, while some lung diseases can lead to respiratory failure.

Some diseases of the lungs

Asthma
This happens when the lung air way is inflammed and become spasm causing shortness of breath and wheezing

Pneumonia
This is caused by bacteria infection in one or both lungs

Chronic bronchitis
This happens mostly due to smoke, causing repeated and frequent cough; making breathing difficult

Obesity
Also called hypoventilation syndrome, causes difficulty in breathing because of the extra weight of the individual on the chest, it can lead to long term breathing problem

Lung cancer
Mostly caused by smoking, and can affect any part of the lungs

Tuberculosis
It is a slowly progressive disease that affecs the lungs

Influenza
This is an infection caused by one or  more flu viruses

Whooping caugh
This is an infection of the air way and highly contagious

Treatment
The treatments of each of the disorders must be done accordingly but I will introduce us to how to keep our lungs healthy because breathing is necessary for keeping us alive
1. Stay in bed in a ventilated room
2. If you smoke quite smoking
3. Practice breathing exercise visit my blog on importance of breathing exercise
4. Do not stay in air polluted area
5. Stop all cold foods and water
6. Take a walk in the evenings
7. Take turmeric tea to fight inflammation
8. Take garlic to fight bacteria
9. Take warm lemon water to clean up the lungs
10. Take apple cider vinegar in warm water for lung cleansing

Your lungs are amazing and important for breathing, keeping it healthy is a smart idea; it will give you a healthy life, respiratory and lung free diseases; and your lungs will thank you for life