Increased Alveolar Ventilation And Exercises

Increased Alveolar Ventilation And Exercises

Your breathing increases in direct proportion to the intensity of your training. This happens because the oxygen that you inhale has the simple job of removing the chemical fragments that your body generates when it burns the sugar for energy. These fragments are hydrogen atoms that combine with oxygen to form carbon and water atoms that combine with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, as described by respiratory physiologists at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.

Hyperventilation

Ventilation, as it relates to the human body, has only one very specific goal, to eliminate carbon dioxide, CO2. The terms of ventilation and hyperventilation are often used erroneously as synonyms for breathing. For example, if you breathe very fast but shallow, you will pass the exhaled air from the lungs only to the trachea, commonly called the air tube, before inhaling again. It may seem like you breathe a lot of air but almost nothing of the stale air comes out and very little fresh air enters. That pattern of rapid breathing is just a hypo-ventilation, insufficient ventilation, because you never expel enough carbon dioxide. Only normal or deep breathing produces ventilation.

Your alveoli

The alveoli are microscopic delicate bubbles that fill your lungs and are connected to the airways that carry the air in and out of them. They are very thin sacs of tissue that support a network of capillaries or tiny blood vessels. If you could extend all your alveoli on a flat surface, they would cover an area almost as big as a tennis court. That exposes all your blood, a single red blood cell at a time, to fresh air to fill your lungs with each deep breath. The perfusion or blood flow, must coincide with the ventilation so that the oxygen diffuses to the blood and the CO2 is diffused in an adequate way. You can not ventilate properly without healthy alveoli.

Exercise

Exercise produces carbon dioxide by oxidation, or by burning sugar molecules. Every time your muscles break a molecule of sugar into carbon and fragments of hydrogen, the electrons are released to activate the nerve and muscle fibers. Without their electrons, the carbon and hydrogen atoms need something else to cling to. That is the work of oxygen and the reason why your muscles and nerves need it when you exercise. The active muscles generate energy and CO2. The more CO2 you produce, the more you have to ventilate your sockets to get rid of it. Exercise increases alveolar ventilation.

Sensitivity of carbon dioxide

The brain and certain receptors in blood vessels are very sensitive to CO2 in the blood.If CO2 rises to one or two percent during exercise, your brain will be in charge of a duplication or more in frequency and respiratory volume. You will notice this by a sudden onset of shortness of breath, your brain gives the signal to increase alveolar ventilation and match your exercise.

Video Tutorial: Mechanism of Breathing.

Like This? Share With Friends: