Respiration

Every day, every minute, every hour, and even every minute, we respire. When we respire, we actually did the process called RESPIRATION. Respiration itself is the process of breaking down food molecules through oxidation. There are 2 types of respiration, those are AEROBIC RESPIRATION and ANAEROBIC RESPIRATION. Let us discuss about these two kinds of respiration in the following paragraph.

AEROBIC RESPIRATION

In our daily life, we usually respire aerobically. Aerobic respiration occurs only when we are not consuming too much energy (not exercising). Beside human, aerobic respiration can also be processed by plants and most animals. To process aerobic respiration, we need glucose that we can get from food and oxygen that we can get from the air. As a result, those substances will turn into carbon dioxide, water, and large amount of energy. In short, aerobic respiration can be shown by this equation:

ANAEROBIC RESPIRATION


Differs from aerobic respiration, anaerobic respiration occurs only when we did something that makes us tired, such as running and exercising. When we are running, our body needs more energy to do those activities. So, anaerobic respiration must be processed to make extra energy for the body. Compared to anaerobic respiration, this kind of respiration can occurs without the presence of oxygen to assist glucose. However, the product of this respiration is different from anaerobic respiration. If in aerobic respiration we get carbon dioxide and water, in anaerobic respiration we will get lactic acid. And the amount of energy produced in aerobic respiration and anaerobic respiration is also different. In short, Aerobic Respiration can be shown by this equation:

Lactic acid that is produced in this process will stay in your muscles and make pains in the muscles, even sometimes it can make the person fatigue. That is why you usually feel some pain in your body when you exercise too much.





RESPIRATORY ILLNESS

Sometimes, one or more organ in our body can have some illness or abnormality. Our nose can has nose-bleeding, our eyes can have far-sighted or near-sighted, and then the same goes to respiratory organs. Respiratory organs have much illness. These are some illness that took place in or caused by respiratory organs:


1. Asthma
    This illness can only be experienced by some people. People believe that this illness came from the person’s parents or even grandparents. If a person experience asthma, he/she will have difficulty in breathing. Even though its causes are still unknown, but researchers think that it might happen because of infections in respiratory organs.


2. Lung Cancer
    Before we discuss about the lung cancer, you need to know what cancer is. Cancer is an abnormality caused by the over division of cells, which make some more addition of tissues to an organ called tumor. So, lung cancer is the cancer that was produced at the lungs. Smoking is one cause of lung cancer. The more a person smoke, then there will be more chance for the person to experience lung cancer.


3. Chronic bronchitis
    This illness usually caused by irritants in tobacco smoke. There are some changes that will happen when you experience chronic bronchitis. These changes happened a lot in the passage way from the mouth to the lungs, such as the cilia. The cilia are paralyzed during chronic bronchitis, thus dust cannot be removed. There is one of the changes that we can see from the person external body. A person that experience chronic bronchitis usually has difficulty to breathe, and sometimes cough hardly.


4. Emphysema
    Emphysema can be caused by irritants in tobacco smoke and violent coughing. There are some changes that will happen when you experience emphysema. One of them took place at the air sacs. A person that experience emphysema has his/her partition walls (located between air sacs) broken and has his/her air sacs shrinking, thus make gaseous exchange difficult. Same with chronic bronchitis, a person that experience emphysema has difficulty in breathing.













To learn more about respiration,  follow these links below :
- www.biotopics.co.uk/humans/respro.html
- www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respiration