No one knows the joy of inhaling a deep breath like those who can’t. More than 235 million people around the world are living with asthma today. Our overall health depends on a healthy pair of lungs, but the vital role they play in protecting our bodies from environmental toxins is genuinely understated.
As your body goes about its everyday processes, like eating, breathing, and moving, you produce carbon dioxide as a waste product. Your lungs exchange the carbon dioxide inside you for oxygen in your immediate habitat.
As you become more or less active, the respiratory center in your brain is able to detect your body’s levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide and regulate them as necessary.
Amazingly, your body has evolved to breathe automatically without your conscious input, and you could go your whole life without ever thinking to breathe.
Parts of Your Respiratory System
- Lungs: You have two lungs made from elastic tissue in your chest that allow you to take oxygen from your environment while removing carbon dioxide.
- Diaphragm: The diaphragm (the main muscle used in breathing) contracts when you inhale air. This causes the lungs to expand. When you exhale, the diaphragm relaxes and pushes air out of your body.
- Trachea (Windpipe): You breathe air in through your mouth or nose into your windpipe, then into your lungs, and then out through the windpipe again.
- Bronchi: The windpipe separates into a complex network of small tubular airways called bronchi, which look like tree branches. These airways divide into smaller and smaller ones.
- Alveoli: The bronchi end in tiny sacs of air called alveoli.
Why Is Your Lung Health So Important?
Breathing is an automatic function, and normally, you might take your lungs and your lung health for granted. But you shouldn't! The lungs have the vital function of taking oxygen from the environment and transferring it to the bloodstream, and they also play an essential role in many other processes of your body.
- They Keep Your Body Alkaline. The lungs help with the pH balance of your body. When they detect a rise in acidity, they increase the rate of ventilation to expel carbon dioxide faster.
- They Filter Blood Clots. To prevent "air embolisms," the lungs filter out small blood clots from the bloodstream.
- They Protect Your Heart. The lungs serve as a sort of "airbag" for the heart, absorbing the shock and protecting it in certain types of collisions.
- They Protect Your Body From Infections. The lungs trap pathogen agents that cause infection and expel them from the body by exhalation.
- They Regulate Blood Flow. The lungs can vary how much blood they contain at any moment. This function can be useful, for example, during exercise, when they interact with the heart and help it function more efficiently.
- They Help Your Body Detox. Up to 70% of waste is eliminated through your lungs just by breathing.
How to Protect Your Respiratory System
Quit Smoking
It's never too late to quit smoking to protect your respiratory system and lung health!
Cigarette smoke narrows the air passages in the lungs and makes breathing more difficult. Additionally, it reduces the concentration of carotenoid antioxidants by 25%, which can increase risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and lung disease, including emphysema and bronchitis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
It's also the main cause of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), not to mention many other illnesses such as erectile dysfunction, vision loss, and rheumatoid arthritis.
Avoid Secondhand Smoke
Passive smoking, or secondhand smoke, can be as harmful as lighting up the cigarette yourself. Each year in the US, secondhand smoke causes 480,000 deaths — 90% of lung cancer deaths and 80% of COPD deaths, per the CDC.
Opening a window or turning up a fan just won't cut it, so make sure you make your car and home smoke-free, and ask people around you not to smoke.
Limit Exposure to Outdoor Air Pollution
Air pollution speeds up the aging of the lungs and increases chronic lung disease risk. It also irritates your lungs, nasal passages, and throat. To protect yourself and take care of your lungs, check the air pollution levels in your area, and avoid going outside when they’re high.
Another thing you can do is fill your house or office with indoor plants. Plants can help filter out contaminants and cleanse the air around you and your loved ones, while also boosting well-being and healing.
Avoid Contact With Lung Aggressors
Even if you don’t smoke tobacco (which is a wise choice and investment in your long-term health), there are many everyday environmental factors that put the health of your lungs at risk:
- Bleach: Disinfectants are known to directly cause or be an irritant to people with existing lung issues such as asthma.
- Mold: Also known to trigger symptoms of allergies and cause them, mold can be incredibly harmful to your overall health.
- Fire Retardants: These contain chlorine and bromine, which can be highly irritable to your respiratory system.
- Dust: Dust and detritus lives in carpets and rugs and can get stirred up when you walk through it, contributing to inflammation and allergic reactions.
- Paint: Most commercially available household paints contain potentially harmful chemicals that can damage your lungs and exacerbate breathing issues.
- Synthetic Fragrances: Synthetic scents enter your system via the lungs and skin, and are known to cause health issues in people with existing lung problems.
Eat Healthy Foods
Sticking to Dr. Sebi's Nutritional Guide can help keep your lungs healthy and boost your immune system to fight infections. Try incorporating some of these dense, nutritious foods into your diet and take steps to protect the health of your lungs.
- Bell Peppers: packed with carotenoids, polyphenols, and nutrients essential for healthy lungs
- Apples: rich in nutrients and exceptionally high levels of beta-carotene and antioxidants
- Tomatoes (cherry and plum only): packed with antioxidants like lycopene, which are linked to decreased rates of heart disease and cancer, and minerals such as calcium, potassium, folate, and phosphorus
- Blueberries: excellent source of antioxidants, nourishing the lungs, managing cholesterol, lowering blood pressure, improving insulin sensitivity, and improving cognitive function
- Olive oil (not for cooking): antioxidant-rich, anti-inflammatory, and heart-friendly oil with high levels of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids, as well as oleic acid
- Walnuts: excellent source of omega-3 fatty acids and helps you fight asthma and other respiratory ailments
- Mushrooms: rich in fiber, phosphorus, and antioxidants and may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes
- Oranges (Seville or sour only): contain calcium, potassium, and other nutrients; acts as a natural protector of the immune system, guarding the cells against inflammation, damage, and helping you heal faster
- Kale: may protect against heart disease and cancer, while supporting eye and bone health.
- Dandelion Greens: excellent source of antioxidants, calcium, and potassium
- Brazil Nuts: among the richest sources of selenium you can eat (one Brazil nut can contain more than 150% of the recommended intake)
- Cayenne Pepper: provides nutrients like potassium and magnesium, helping promote the proper function of the lungs, heart, immune system, and other organs
- Water: dry lungs are more prone to irritation, so keep guzzling the recommended gallon of spring water every day
Use Herbs to Cleanse the Lungs
Mother nature has provided plenty of offerings for the good of lungs everywhere. Herbs can help protect your lungs and entire respiratory system by opening up airways to allow a better flow of oxygen around the body, relieving congestion and inflamed nasal passages, and relaxing the muscles associated with the respiratory system.
One of the most common ways of cleansing the respiratory system is adding herbs to hot water and inhaling the steam to get the therapeutic goodness straight into your lungs. Here is a list of herbs commonly used to fortify and cleanse the lungs:
- Ginger: Infamously anti-inflammatory, Ginger Root Tea is a powerful panacea for a sore throat as well as clearing lung congestion.
- Mullein: A lung tonic often recommended by Dr. Sebi, Mullein helps to cleanse your system of common respiratory symptoms like coughs and colds.
- Oregano: Bestowed with decongestant properties, oregano is a natural antihistamine, protecting you from mold, dust, and other inflammatory chemicals in your environment.
- Thyme: This herb is as delicious as it is therapeutic, possessing potent antibacterial and mucous-clearing properties.
Exercise Regularly
Exercise doesn’t just strengthen muscles; it also supports the lungs. When you’re physically active, your breathing can speed up to 60 times its normal speed. This allows more oxygen to be transported around your body to your muscles, while emitting more carbon dioxide through heavier exhalations.
Getting enough exercise makes your lungs stronger and better at giving your body the oxygen it needs. It also helps boost your body's ability to fight germs that could make you sick.
Perform Deep Breathing Exercises
Most of us shallow breathe every day, and a lack of proper breathing can cause respiratory illnesses, and even heart disease. Diaphragmatic breathing or “belly breathing” and “deep breathing” involves actively pulling the diaphragm down with each inhale and, therefore, filling your lungs more efficiently with air.
These techniques can benefit healthy people and those living with asthma, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis.
Watch Your Posture
Because of the soft structure of the lungs, they will fit the space you fit them in. Slouching will compress the size of your lungs, and techniques like leaning back in your chair or doing heart-opening yoga movements will help expand your lungs. Another method is simply reaching overhead to allow more space for your lungs.
Sip Some Immune-Support Tea
Dr. Sebi's Immune Support Herbal Tea also helps protect your lungs and immune system's health. Elderberries, its main ingredient, reduces swelling in mucous membranes, including the sinuses, and relieves nasal congestion. It's ideal for helping boost the immune system and take care of your lungs.
15 Fascinating Facts about Lungs
- You breathe about 22,000 times every day.
- You inhale around 11,000 liters of air every day.
- You emit approximately 17.5 mm of water through your breath every hour.
- Your lungs are the only organ in your body that can float on water.
- Your body only uses 5% of oxygen you breathe in; the rest is exhaled again.
- Your lungs contain about 300 million alveoli (tiny air sacs in your lungs).
- It’s possible to live with just one lung (and many people do).
- The rising and falling of the chest isn’t produced by the movement of air around the body, it’s produced by the movement of the diaphragm.
- If your lungs were stretched out end to end they would be the size of a tennis court.
- Women and children generally breathe faster than men.
- Some people can breathe through both nostrils, but most only breathe through one.
- The right lung has three sections, called lobes, but the left lung only has two.
- Your lungs are physically connected to your chest bone and spinal cord.
- Lungs also help you to talk by pushing air through your voice box.
- If they were spread out end to end, the airways in both lungs would be roughly 1,500 mi (2,414 km) long.
