3 ms·

Some people have (kinda) learnt to - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_breathing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_breathing

red369 5y ago
Is this 'just' continuously blowing out from air stored in cheeks, while breathing as normal through the nose? I have said 'just', but it doesn't seem easy! It doesn't seem to me that the lungs are being used differently (to normal breathing). I could be wrong. (Edited to add text in parenthesis in 3rd sentence)
- ratmice 5y ago
  Yes, take a glass of water and fill your mouth, pretend to be a fountain spitting a stream of water, and breath through your nose. That is how I was tought to learn it anyways.
gerdesj 5y ago
That's very different. Birds have a full lung load of air stored in sacs and bones and that fills the lungs as the stale air is expelled. Mammal: Inhale -> burn -> exhale Bird: Inhale -> burn -> inhale -> exhale I think I've over simplified the bird method but basically they inhale and exhale at the same time as required. They literally have double ended lungs, you push air in at one end and exhale CO2 at the other end. We mammals use the same route in and out of our lungs and the whole thing is driven by our diaphragm which pumps the bottom of our pleural cavity. The bird mechanism is obviously efficient for oxygenation but it must have a cost that our body plan discarded or at least failed to even consider many millennia ago.
- kmarc 5y ago
  (Am I the only one who have read this as a Haskell function declaration, and the signature just didn't make any sense?)
- SkittyDog 5y ago
  > ... it must have a cost that our body plan discarded ... Our body plan didn't discard this mechanism, any more than it discarded wings or beans. We never had any of those features in our ancestry, because mammals aren't descended from birds. Our most recent common ancestor is much, much earlier than bird ancestors began evolving any mechanisms related to flight or high-altitude breathing.
- robbiep 5y ago
  > but it must have a cost that our body plan discarded or at least failed to even consider many millennia ago. You only climb mount improbable, you don’t go down it
- rightbyte 5y ago
  I guess the main drawback of such a solution is coughing up stuff? Probably harder to make air go the other way?

red369 5y ago

Is this 'just' continuously blowing out from air stored in cheeks, while breathing as normal through the nose? I have said 'just', but it doesn't seem easy! It doesn't seem to me that the lungs are being used differently (to normal breathing). I could be wrong. (Edited to add text in parenthesis in 3rd sentence)

ratmice 5y ago
Yes, take a glass of water and fill your mouth, pretend to be a fountain spitting a stream of water, and breath through your nose. That is how I was tought to learn it anyways.

gerdesj 5y ago

That's very different. Birds have a full lung load of air stored in sacs and bones and that fills the lungs as the stale air is expelled. Mammal: Inhale -> burn -> exhale Bird: Inhale -> burn -> inhale -> exhale I think I've over simplified the bird method but basically they inhale and exhale at the same time as required. They literally have double ended lungs, you push air in at one end and exhale CO2 at the other end. We mammals use the same route in and out of our lungs and the whole thing is driven by our diaphragm which pumps the bottom of our pleural cavity. The bird mechanism is obviously efficient for oxygenation but it must have a cost that our body plan discarded or at least failed to even consider many millennia ago.

kmarc 5y ago
(Am I the only one who have read this as a Haskell function declaration, and the signature just didn't make any sense?)
SkittyDog 5y ago
> ... it must have a cost that our body plan discarded ... Our body plan didn't discard this mechanism, any more than it discarded wings or beans. We never had any of those features in our ancestry, because mammals aren't descended from birds. Our most recent common ancestor is much, much earlier than bird ancestors began evolving any mechanisms related to flight or high-altitude breathing.
robbiep 5y ago
> but it must have a cost that our body plan discarded or at least failed to even consider many millennia ago. You only climb mount improbable, you don’t go down it
rightbyte 5y ago
I guess the main drawback of such a solution is coughing up stuff? Probably harder to make air go the other way?