Breathing: It's Not Just About Oxygen!

Jacqueline Carnegie Web Instructional Design by Jifu He Selected artwork by James Deane (JD)

Why do we breathe??

    I am sure that many of you will answer that we breathe to obtain oxygen for our tissues. While you are certainly on the right track, you are only partly correct.  For, indeed, there are two gases that are exchanged every time we move air into and out of our lungs:  oxygen (O₂) and carbon dioxide (CO₂).  As you explore this web site you will begin to appreciate more and more our critical need to continually unload CO₂, as it accumulates in the bloodstream, and the key role that this "other" respiratory gas plays in influencing our rate and depth of breathing. 

This website is composed of three learning modules that you should do in order by clicking on the links near the top of this page.  When you have completed the modules associated with this website, you will be able to:

• summarize the role of the lungs in clearing CO₂ from the bloodstream.

• delineate the role of blood CO₂ levels in regulating lung ventilation.

• recognize various clinical and physiological scenarios as representations of alterations in dead space volume that have associated influences on blood CO₂ clearance and the regulation of lung ventilation by the ventral respiratory group of the central nervous system (the VRG).

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