If our body needs oxygen in the air to live. then what the 77% of nitrogen do to our body?

Question

as I was told from early education that the air we currently breathe in contains 21% oxygen and 77-ish% of nitrogen and the rest are other particles.

So I have a dumb question on what the body uses nitrogen we breathe in for?

In: 387

Answer 1

Nitrogen is absorbed through our lungs and dissolved in our blood and other tissues where it does … almost nothing. Divers experience nitrogen narcosis when high pressure underwater increases the amounts of nitrogen in our systems, like 1 standard drink per 10 m of depth. Presumably there’s some very slight effect even at normal atmospheric pressure and I wonder if we’d be more clear-headed if we replaced the nitrogen with helium or neon.