How to Breathe

Nope, not a sappy love song** written by Taylor Swift or the like, but actually how we breathe! We learned this in class and I felt it was blog worthy:

The brain has parts. One of the parts is called the medulla. To keep things simple, part of the medulla  makes us breathe by ramping up a signal and then makes us exhale by stopping the signal for 3 seconds. Repeat forever until death. Cool. But cooler than that, the medulla has a lot of inputs to tell it to change the way we breathe. Here is an example:

In our nasal mucosa, or as I like to call it, nosehole, we have nerve endings that sometimes get irritated. These nerve endings are sensitive to different gases, smoke, perfumes, and even cold air. When they get irritated, they produce chemicals and send info back up to the medulla. The medulla then tells the lungs to take a deep breath, hold it, and then VIOLENTLY EXPEL all of the pressurized gas, and hopefully the irritants along with it. ACHEW! That's right, that's why we sneeze.

Ok maybe I'm the only one who thinks sneezing is cool, but I had a cold last week and sneezing was pretty relevant. On a public health side - sneezing is gross, and it may expel irritants but it's spreading those irritants along with viral particles (including the common cold) around so other people can catch them. Not cute. So make sure to catch those sneezes in your cubital fossa - or as I like to call it, elbow pit!

**On another note, and to sound like another sappy love song, I held a heart in my hand today. Learning the heart has been fun, but physiology of the heart and lungs reminds me a lot of physics - not my strongest subject. 

But Thursday I finally get to break out my brand new stethoscope and listen to some heart sounds / learn how to take a blood pressure. Woot!