Your breathing patterns plays a major role in maintaining the pH of your blood. Normal blood pH should be around 7.4. If a patient begins to hyperventilate for a period of time, they breathe out higher than average levels of carbon dioxide. Because carbon dioxide is an acidic molecule, losing large amounts of it can cause the blood to become more alkaline, causing a rise in pH of more than 7.4. When a patient begins to experience cessation of breathing, the amount of carbon dioxide in their blood stream builds up since it is not being breathed out, causing the blood to become more acidic and drop in pH less than that of 7.4. Typically, your blood is most acidic in the morning because a healthy human’s breathing rate drops during sleep due to no physical activity. This is why exercising and other breathing techniques such as yoga and meditation feel so great in the mornings. Your body is actually stabilizing its blood pH through these actions.
Video by: @medicaltalks
In Video: a pair of pig lungs being inflated during a biology class.
Written by: Student Doctor Navpreet Singh Badesha
