Why is it that we don’t often breath to our full capacity, we take shallow breathes and rarely take full breath

Question

Why is it that we don’t often breath to our full capacity, we take shallow breathes and rarely take full breath

In: 680

Answer 1

**Fun fact:** You do need to take occasional deep breaths (often called alveolar breaths) as they re-inflate tiny sacs in your lungs (alveoli) that absorb oxygen into your blood and can stick together over time due to surface tension.

This re-increases the surface area of your lungs to full, resulting in more oxygen transferring per breath.

It’s why originally people didn’t live for long in “iron lungs” as they neglected to realise how important “sighing” was in this/the necessary re-inflation of alveoli, and regular shallow breathing was unhealthy over time.

It’s also a neat energy hack… if you’re ever feeling sluggish, take a breath, pause then take another one (before breathing out) and this will re-inflate your lungs fully and should give you a small energy boost.