It is common that a person never breathes with two nostrils at once, instead of this, the nostrils provide breathing alternately. We decided to check if this is really so.
Information about such a feature of the human body can be found on entertainment resources, and on Information. Headlines Usually enough categorical, for example, "scientists have proven that a person always breathes only one nostril." This is also written in Blogs, the paradox in the work of our body is interested in sites questions and answers.
Most processes that ensure the vital activity of the body, such as heartbeat, thermoregulation, secretion of glands and organs, occur involuntarily and do not obey our will. A person cannot, at his own request, make the heart not beat or lower the temperature of his body a couple of degrees, but detain For briefly, breathing is quite possible for us. That is breathing Maybe Be both an automatic process and arbitrary.
From a scientific point of view, breathing is The totality processes that ensure the consumption of oxygen and the release of carbon dioxide. Breathing occurs both at the level of the whole organism and on cellular. Air from the external environment usually flows through the nose, but can also come through the mouth - as in the case when nasal breathing is impossible and arbitrarily (for example, with auscultation The doctor may ask to breathe only with his mouth). With involuntary nasal breathing, a person usually does not think about whether his nostrils work evenly. You can draw a simple test: to click one and the other nostril (pressing it with a finger to the nasal septum) and determine which one breathes better than the other. If you conduct such an experiment several times during the day, then the observation will vary significantly. This is due to such process, How The nasal cycle -Regular switching of the air flow from one nostril to another, which occurs on average every two to three hours. However Fixed Cases of extremely short (15 minutes) and long (more than ten hours) nasal cycles.
The nasal cycle is regulated by the autonomic nervous system - it Gives The signal of the thick network of blood vessels in the nasal sinks from time to time expand and fill with blood. In this case, the tissues of the nasal sink occupy a larger volume, and the air passes with difficulty. Normally, the autonomic nervous system gives a signal about the expansion of the vessels to the nostrils in turn, significantly reducing the throughput of one of them, but without turning it out of breathing completely.
Analyzing data on the daily breathing of 33 volunteers, Israeli experts Calculatedthat at each moment of time, three quarters of the air consumed passes through a more active nostril and a quarter - through less active, and after some time the nostrils change roles. Michael Benninger, doctor from Cleveland Clinic, suggeststhat such alternation could be provided for by nature to protect the nasal mucosa from drying out. Eat Hypothesesthat the nasal cycle Protects us from respiratory infections and allergic reactions. Perhaps he is also Allows people learn more smells, since every nostril perceives There are a little differently.
However, not only the nasal cycle regulates which nostril breathes better. For example, in a dream on the side, gravity will be act Uneven on the nostrils: that of them that is lower, will experience a greater effect of gravity, the vessels will expand and the throughput will decrease. If this happens during the activity of another nostril, then the person most likely will not notice this, if at this moment it should be provided by most of the breathing, then the brain will give the body a command to turn over on the other side or wake up. By the way, in a dream the nasal cycle It becomes Longer than with wakefulness, and in the middle nostrils “change” every 4.5 hours.
At the same time, judging by data The already mentioned Israeli scientists, one nostril usually still works more. The right -handed nostril has right in the period of activity for about 2.63 hours, while the right “works” only 2.17 hours. Such studies were not conducted on left -handed people, and so far scientists cannot give an answer how the dominance of the nostrils and hemispheres of the brain is connected, which are responsible for whether the left -handed person or right -handed person.
The distribution of breathing in the proportion of 1 to 3, which is written by the authors of the experiment in Israel, is not universally, but averaged. Scientists from the Yaroslavl State Medical University were invited to study daily distribution of nasal breathing 28 healthy volunteers. For 24 hours, including in a dream, the volunteers carried a portable rhinofloum - a device for measuring the volume of air passing through the nasal cavity.
It turned out that individual rhythms have a wide variety - in particular, the nasal cycle can have periods of coincidences when both nostrils breathe approximately the same, episodes of almost completely turning off one nostrils from work and replacement of its function can occur. In some cases, it is also observed that only one is involved in the nasal cycle, then joining the work, then falling out of it, while the second works relatively stably.
TO conclusion Doctors from the University Hospital of Ulma (Germany) came about the uniqueness of the nasal cycles. Having carried out daily rhinofloometry to 55 volunteers, they found that fluctuations in air passage through the left and right nostril are much wider than the principle of 25% and 75%, bred by Israeli doctors. So, they noted that there are people with an irregular nasal cycle, a unilateral cycle and having no cycle at all. By different estimates, from 20% to 80% of people have a pronounced nasal cycle, characterized by temporary difficulty of breathing on the one hand.
Thus, a person can really breathe involuntarily with only one nostril at a certain period of time, but scientists have not described cases when this type of breathing was constant. Often, a rule of 25% and 75% is often performed - at each individual moment of oxygen need, they are provided by about a quarter of one nostril and three quarters - another. In this case, the nature of the nasal cycle can be extremely diverse and change throughout the day.
Image on the cover: Image by Stocksnap from Pixabay
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