THE RESPIRATORY SYSTEM.

THE RESPIRATORY SYSTEM

The job of your respiratory system is very simple: To bring oxygen into your body, and remove the carbon dioxide from your body. Your body needs oxygen to survive. 

The main organs in your respiratory system are your lungs.

We breathe in using a muscle called the diaphragm. 

When we breathe in, air gets forced through our nose or mouth, down our windpipe, and into bronchi tubes in our lungs. These bronchi tubes branch out and get smaller and smaller, like the roots or branches of a tree.

At the end of the smallest branches of the bronchi are tiny air sacs called alveoli. These air sacs have a very thin, one cell thick wall that allows oxygen to be passed to red blood cells as they are passing by.  

The alveoli don't just pass oxygen to our blood, they also help to clean out waste gas from our blood cells. This waste gas is carbon dioxide. When we need to breathe the carbon dioxide out of our lungs, the diaphragm bows up and pushes the air back out, getting rid of the carbon dioxide. This makes room for fresh air with new oxygen to come back in on our next breath.