What is the role of our lungs?

HEALTH

In this article I will explain your body to you, and how you can use this understanding to improve your health, and hopefully live a longer and more enjoyable life. You will learn how your body works, and how you can avoid damage to it. You will also learn how we doctors examine you and treat illnesses. And most importantly, you will learn how you can change your lifestyle to stay healthy.
PIH doctors will answer your questions in a column every Thursday. Send your questions to: [email protected]

THE lungs are like two bags of tissue located just below the rib cage and above the belly. Each lung has a different size. The right lung has to make room for the liver, which is right beneath it. The left lung is narrower because it must make space for the heart.
Typically, a man’s lungs can hold more air than a woman’s. In healthy people without chronic lung disease, even at maximum exercise intensity, we only use 70 per cent of the possible lung capacity.

Function: Adults typically take 15 to 20 breaths a minute, which comes to around 20,000 breaths a day. Babies tend to breathe faster than adults. For example, a new-born’s normal breathing rate is about 40 times each minute while the average resting respiratory rate for adults is 12 to 16 breaths per minute.
Though breathing seems simple, it is a very complex process. The lungs are like bellows. When they expand, they pull air into the body. When they compress, they expel carbon dioxide, a waste gas that bodies produce. Lungs do not have muscles to pump air in and out, though. The diaphragm (the muscle that divides the belly from the lungs) and rib cage essentially pump the lungs – and allow us to breath.
As a person breathes, air travels down into the trachea, also known as the windpipe. The trachea divides into smaller passages called the bronchial tubes. The bronchial tubes go into each lung. They branch out into smaller subdivisions throughout each side of the lung. The smallest branches are called bronchioles and each has an air sac, also called alveoli (something like bubbles). There are around 480 million alveoli in the human lungs – and this is where the exchange of the air with the blood happens.
The alveoli have many little veins in their walls. Oxygen passes through into the blood. It is carried to the heart and then pumped throughout the body to the tissues and all organs. As oxygen from the air is going into the bloodstream, carbon dioxide passes from the body with the blood back into the lungs and then makes its journey out of the body with your breath.

How to destroy your lung? By smoking! Tobacco is toxic (poison) to your body. There is enough nicotine in four or five cigarettes to kill an average adult if ingested whole. Smoking harms not only your lungs but nearly every organ of your body. Cigarette smoking causes 87 per cent of lung cancer deaths. Women who smoke have a greater chance of certain pregnancy problems or having a baby die from sudden infant death syndrome. Approximately one quarter of the youth alive in the Western Pacific Region today will die from tobacco use.

Diseases of the lungs
The most common lung-related conditions we see at PIH in Port Moresby are infections like pneumonia and tuberculosis (TB), cancer and smoking-related diseases.
Lung infections, such as pneumonia, are usually caused by viruses, but can also be caused by fungal organisms or bacteria. Some severe or chronic lung infections can cause fluid in the lungs and other symptoms such as coughing up blood and a persistent fever.
Tuberculosis (TB) is a potentially serious infectious disease that mainly affects your lungs. The bacteria that cause tuberculosis are spread from one person to another through tiny droplets released into the air via coughs and sneezes.
Lung cancer is the number one cause of deaths for both men and women in many countries. Symptoms of cancer include coughing up blood, a cough that doesn’t go away, shortness of breath, wheezing, chest pain, headaches, hoarseness, weight loss and bone pain.

PIH doctors suggest five ways to keep your lungs healthy
We often don’t consider the important role our lungs play in keeping us strong and well. It’s not until we experience problems breathing that we take notice. But the truth is, like the rest of our body, our lungs need daily care and attention.

1. Don’t smoke or stop smoking
In fact, smoking is linked to most lung diseases and makes those diseases more severe. Every time you smoke a cigarette, you inhale thousands of chemicals into your lungs, including nicotine, carbon monoxide, and tar. These toxins damage your lungs and cause lungs to age more rapidly. Eventually, the chemicals can change lung cells from normal to cancerous.

2. Exercise to breathe harder
Besides avoiding cigarettes, getting regular exercise is probably the most important thing you can do for the health of your lungs. Just as exercise keeps your body in shape, it keeps your lungs in shape too.
When you exercise, your heart beats faster and your lungs work harder. Your body needs more oxygen to fuel your muscles. Your lungs step up their activity to deliver that oxygen while expelling additional carbon dioxide.
Creating strong, healthy lungs through exercise helps you to better resist aging and disease.

3. Avoid exposure to pollution
Exposure to pollutants in the air can damage your lungs and accelerate aging. Give your lungs a break. Reduce your exposure as much as you can. Avoid second-hand smoke, and try to avoid exercising near heavy traffic, as you can inhale the exhaust.
If you’re exposed to pollutants at work, be sure to take all possible safety precautions. Certain jobs in construction, mining, and waste management can increase risk of exposure to airborne pollutants.

4. Prevent infections
The best way to avoid lung infections is to keep your hands clean. Wash regularly with warm water and soap, and avoid touching your face as much as possible.
Drink plenty of water and eat lots of fruits and vegetables — they contain nutrients that help boost your immune system.
Stay up-to-date with your vaccinations. Get a flu shot each year, and if you’re 55 or older, get a pneumonia vaccination as well.

5. Breathe deeply
Breathing exercises can make your lungs more efficient. To try it yourself, sit somewhere quietly, and slowly breathe in through your nose alone. Then breathe out at least twice as long through your mouth. It may help to count your breaths. For example, as you inhale count 1, 2, 3, 4. Then as you exhale, count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Next week: If you quit smoking will your lungs heal?

• Dr Roland is an academic surgeon from the University of Vienna in Austria, and has worked, built and managed hospitals in Europe, Africa and China operating and treating thousands of patients.