The Body Temple: Oxygen and Breath

by Jack Hoehn  |  27 November 2024  |

“The God who made the world and everything in it
is the Lord of heaven and earth
and does not live in temples built by human hands…
Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything...”
(Acts 17:24,25)

People take oxygen (O₂) for granted because it is just here and we breathe it all the time. But Earth is the only planet ever found with significant O₂ available in its air. The mechanism designed seems to have been the complex ability cyanobacteria have using sunlight to make O₂ by photosynthesis.

Suddenly creating a miracle O₂ atmosphere for earth could not sustain life, because O₂ is so reactive it is constantly oxidizing and being removed from the atmosphere. Every breath you take is removing O₂. At rest you are consuming 1.8 to 2.4 grams of O₂ per minute, or about 2.5 to 3.5 kg/day (5 to 8 pounds). Someone, someplace, somehow has to be producing that much O₂ every day for every human on the planet—and every animal, all the rusting nails, tin roofs, and Ford Focuses. It is not enough to create an atmosphere on the second day of Eden creation. As the Apostle Paul explained to the Athenians, God must constantly be giving life by breath for all things. Every day since creation the same miracle must be done over and over again.

And the created miracle is by designing and maintaining photosynthesis. The miracle that plants and plankton with green membranes can take water and carbon dioxide and with sunlight create O₂ in the air and sugar in the plants. And as the Genesis story says, the firmament (day 2) had to be there before the plants (day 3) or the animals (days 5,6) could be there. But since we can now study the miracle of O₂ done day by day by day, we know how the miracle is being done. Geology suggests it took a very long time to give earth its O₂-rich atmosphere. And a sustainable system that constantly replenishes the oxygen all living things must have.

Sneezing

But that is not the end of the story, for each cell of your body needs access to that O_2. And here we are to nostrils. Air holes. Sure is a good thing they evolved pointed down, because in the first rainstorm those of us with nostrils pointing up would have to very quickly find umbrellas. Two of them, in case one gets plugged, and with a backup safety system so that your fuel intake orifice (mouth) can also work as an emergency breathing tube. But these “air holes” are protected with a specific kind of hair to keep foreign bodies from coming in with the air. And then the nasal passages and breathing tubes are not lined by skin but by a specific kind of mucosa with a moist secretion and little cilia that constantly sweep out any dust particles or pollens that get by the guard hairs. Nose cilia sweep back to the throat; lung cilia sweep up to the throat.

Each respiratory epithelial cell has 200 cilia that beat 10 to 20 times a second–unless you poison them with tobacco smoke or smog. You also have two automatic safety procedures that work without your thinking about them—sneezing and coughing. And the fluid layer or mucous of the nose is a specific fluid unlike the mucous of the GI tract, or the tears of your eyes. So many things are revealed by scientific study to not at all be random mutations, but intentional engineering. The nose and trachea and bronchioles have a specific “airway surface liquid…the composition of which is tightly regulated.”

Waving

And the cilia can’t just wave; they have to be a coordinated wave. All in the same direction, in synchrony. Humans in a football stadium are capable of performing a human wave. How are the millions of cells lining your respiratory tract able to all wave in coordination back to your throat in the nose and up and out in the lungs. While all the millions of cilia living in your digestive tract are able to wave in coordination down and out. And all the cilia in the male reproductive vas take sperm out into the urethra, and all the cilia in the female reproductive tract encourage the sperm to come up and into the fallopian tubes at the same time as bringing the ova down, truly a “magic carpet” of cilia and “tightly regulated” mucosa.

Warm and moist

Why do we get bloody noses? Filling your lungs with the vital capacity during exercise of 4–5 liters of below freezing air 12–20 times a minute could rapidly cause total body hypothermia, unless your nose with its turbinates and sinuses was an air conditioning system to warm and humidify each winter breath. The very thin and delicate O₂ exchange membranes of the lungs’ alveoli in particular would be damaged if the air was not humid and warm enough. And then breathing out takes back the moisture. Mouth breathers get very dry; nose breathers don’t, by design.

Handover

A breath of air with its 80% nitrogen and 20% O₂ safely preconditioned reaches down the 1,500 miles of airways to the 480,000,000 alveoli you have in both lungs. We have 22 square feet of skin on our outside, but 1,400 square feet of lung on the inside. Why do we have two lungs? We have two lungs because of intelligent design and foresight that any critical system works better if it has a backup. An airplane with two engines is safer than an airplane with a single engine. In case of engine failure there is a backup. A thoughtful engineer would design a critical component like a lung with a backup system if necessary. So we can breathe with our nose normally, but in case of emergency we can mouth breathe. We do well with two good lungs, but in an emergency, life can be sustained with one lung.

Then at the end of these miles of airway are tiny little sacs, alveoli, with just a thin membrane between air and blood that gives 1,400 square feet of surface in the most compact manner of two lungs. There are three lobes on the left and two on the right to make room for the heart, just as if designed. Magic, survival of the lucky, or design?

Oxygen from inspired air diffuses through the gas-permeable membranes in alveoli, and carbon dioxide (CO₂) diffuses out, and the most unselfish of cells, your red blood cells, grab four oxygen molecules and carry them off to the left side of the heart and are pumped out with their precious cargo everywhere in the body. They use none of the oxygen themselves, and hold it quite tightly through aorta, big vessels, small ones, smaller ones, until they are down to the capillaries, where they pass through one red cell at a time, and sensing the low O₂ levels in those tissues and the high CO2 levels, release their O₂ that diffuses the thin capillary walls gifting their precious cargo into the cells needing it to function.

Some of the CO₂ coming out of cells attach to the deoxygenated globin part of hemoglobin, and the rest is carried in the blood plasma back to the lungs where it is expired, and the cycle begins again. Each red cell does this thousands of times for about four months; then it is removed by the spleen. The bone marrow is constantly making new cells to keep your blood hemoglobin healthy and replace the worn out ones.

Last breath

The life is in the blood. After Jesus died, his blood separated into red cells and plasma or serum, due to the pulmonary edema that appears to have been his terminal event. The confirmatory spear into his thoracic cage suggests that his death was caused by not being able to breathe any longer due to the pulmonary edema. That is why Jesus’ last prayer was, “Father, take my breath.”

We are so fortunate that this can be our last prayer too.

_______________________________________________

(Lung illustration purchased on Etsy from Neejad, Museum of Medicine, Dublin, Ohio.)

This is #15 in series on worship guided by science, with examples from the human body as a place to worship God on scientific grounds. #14 on the brain (Minding the Mind) is here. #13 on the blood (A Most Magical Juice) is here. (#1 the introduction is here). Jack is also known as Dr. John Byron Hoehn, MD (LLU), CCFP (Canada), DTM&H (London), Member AAFP (USA). His BA was in Religion and German majors with a minor in chemistry from Pacific Union College. He was a medical missionary and licensed minister of the Adventist church for 13 years, a baptized member for 66 years, an ordained elder since age 20, a Sabbath School teacher for decades. And he once held a series of public evangelism meetings in a tent!

Jack’s book Adventist Tomorrow—Fresh Ideas While Waiting for Jesus in its second edition continues to be the most popular book Adventist Today has published. You may not want to give up your Adventist ideas, but aren’t there some needing to be updated or strengthened? Read the book and share it with someone whose ideas you respect–pastors, teachers, children, siblings, elders, missionaries, dear friends, curious neighbors. Christmas and birthdays are coming! Chapters include:  DNA–Its Message, Creationism–We Can Work This Out, Creationism–What Does the Bible Really Say?, Intoxicants, Very Political–Influencing Culture, Open to the Openness of God, Honest with the Bible, Is Friday Night Holy? and many more.

Jack’s wife Deanne has a delightful new book, Loving You—I Went to Africa, about their 13 years as medical missionaries. Would make a great Christmas gift for anyone who likes animals, Africa, love, and life. Especially helpful to look at a heavy time in history through a woman’s eyes.
Readers say: 

• “What a beautiful story. Completely drew me in and I read every word. The pacing, the way the events unfold feels like hearing a friend talking about an exotic life of service….”
• “Great storytelling, great read, hard to put down.”
• “I wanted to read all day and yet didn’t want the story to end. What a treasure.”
  

These books and others are available at SHOP in the menu at the top of the page in print and e-book formats.  All sales go to support Adventist Today.]

To comment, click/tap here.