This question is most likely just due to a misunderstanding the human body, but how come when my lungs expand, and air rushes in to fill the void, I only feel the suction above my trachea? There’s air at the same pressure below my trachea opening, isn’t there? And there’s gases that are not air inside my stomach, right? Someone set me straight.
In: Biology
Breathing works by creating a vacuum in your lungs. Your diaphragm, a muscle below your lungs, contracts to pull and expand your lungs downwards, creating negative pressure inside of your lungs. The suction comes from your lungs, so that’s where the air goes. It doesn’t go into your stomach because your stomach isn’t creating suction. Your esophagus, the tube your food goes down, is also sort of flat and flaccid, unlike your teacher which is open and rigid, so there’s not really an open pathway for air to flow into. It is quite common to get air in the stomach when someone is being manually ventilated with a bag-valve-mask because you are forcing air into the oral and nasal cavities and some will enter the esophagus.
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