• Question: why do we have two ways of breathing (nose and mouth)?

    Asked by Hanni to Chloe, Irene, Pierre, NULL, Uday on 17 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Chloe Huseyin

      Chloe Huseyin answered on 17 Nov 2015:

      Your nose and mouth are both connected, so all of the air you breathe in goes to your lungs but the difference is just how it gets into your body at the very start.

      If you breathe in through your nose the hairs in your nose trap any dust and dirt and your nose can also detect smells, your mouth allows you to eat and drink as well as breathe and any dust that gets into your mouth gets stuck to saliva and can be swallowed (or spat out).

    • Photo: Irene Regan

      Irene Regan answered on 17 Nov 2015:

      Each day we breathe about 20,000 times. All of this breathing couldn’t happen without help from the respiratory system, this includes the nose, throat, voice box, windpipe, and lungs, which are all connected. With each breath, you take in air through your nostrils and mouth, and your lungs fill up and empty out.

      At the same time, you inhale air through your mouth and nose, and the air heads down your trachea, or windpipe. On the way down the windpipe, tiny hairs called cilia move gently to keep mucus and dirt out of the lungs. The air then goes through the series of branches in your lungs, through the bronchi and the bronchioles. The air finally ends up in the 600 million alveoli. As these millions of alveoli fill up with air, the lungs get bigger.

      Even if the air you breathe is dirty or polluted, your respiratory system filters out dust etc that enter through the nose and mouth. The cilia (hairs) in your nose block dust getting in through your nose and the saliva in your mouth collects and block dirt, which can be swallowed but allowing us to breathe at the same time.

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