Why is it that we don’t often breath to our full capacity, we take shallow breathes and rarely take full breath
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I have cystic fibrosis and while I’m generally fine, my lung capacity is reduced, to about 75%-80%. Yes, I’m much healthier than others with CF, I got diagnosed late and have great care. Part of this care is to have lung function tests (Spirometry). I generally do 2 different types of tests, both testing full lung and breathing capacity. I don’t know exactly how many I’ve done but it would probably be close to 100 of each.
Both of these tests require me to inhale and exhale fully as in lungs full of air and then completely empty. Exhaling, to completely empty the lungs, is especially hard and took me a while to fully understand how to do it properly. It needs good control over your diaphragm to push the last bit of air out of your lungs. One of the tests you need to breathe out as fast and hard as possible and I always get out of breath doing it and need a couple of minutes to recover so I can do it again.
The reason for saying all of this is that to breathe like this is hard work and exhausting. Its definitely not the same as breathing while you are doing no physical activity, and its also nothing like breathing hard after exercise. I think everyone should go through these kinds of tests at least once as it shows you how much you can breathe out when you have to.
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