How does the lungs know which is O2 and CO2? We breathe a ton of different gasses daily but what happens to the other gases other than O2 and CO2 when inhaled?
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Someone else explained the O2 and CO2 part really well but missed out the nitrogen and other gas part so I thought I’d lend a hand.
As the other person mentioned, the gases in our lungs and blood like to equiliberate, so the high CO2 low O2 blood and the High O2 low CO2 air equal out and O2 gets transferred to the blood and CO2 to the air. Well these gases are in different quantities that can equaliberate because the O2 gets used up by the cells and they turn it into energy with CO2 as the bay product, so the blood Carries all the CO2 away from the cells and towards the lungs to swap it with fresh O2. Well gases like nitrogen and argon are inert and so the cells can’t react with them and so the amount of nitrogen and non important gases stays relatively constant in the blood at all times regardless of it’s near the cells or the lungs, and so the air can’t equiliberate with the nitrogen and other gases whenever we breathe because it is already in an equilibrium and stays like that forever (gross simplification)
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