There's something to be said about good sigh. Sometimes this deep exhalation brings not only psychological satisfaction, but also physical restoration. According to a study published in the journal Achievements of scienceNew evidence indicates that sighing actually helps reset your body, especially the fluid that covers your body. lungs.
Pulmonary surfactants are a special group of phospholipids and proteins that coat the outer surface of the respiratory organs. Essentially, they act as a lubricant for the lungs, reducing their surface tension as you breathe. They are also critical to your health. More than half of all premature babies born before the 28th week of pregnancy experience fluid deficiency. causing some alveoli their lungs collapse. In the late 1980s, researchers discovered that this often fatal condition could be alleviated by extracting similar surfactants from the lungs of animals and injecting them into the lungs of a premature baby.
“This works very well in newborns. The fluid covers the entire surface, making the lungs more deformable or, in more technical terms, pliable,” ETH Zurich researcher and study co-author Jan Vermant. says the statement.
However, COVID-19 complicated things. Vermant and his colleagues cited about 3,000 adults who developed acute respiratory distress syndrome during the pandemic. In these cases, the fluid transfer procedure used for premature babies did not work.
“This shows that it’s not just about reducing surface tension,” Vermant explained. “We believe that mechanical stresses within the liquid also play an important role.”
Since then, he and an international team of researchers have experimented with simulating normal and deep breathing in a laboratory setting and then measuring the surface tension of lung surfactants. They found that lung surface tension decreased significantly after particularly deep breaths, suggesting a physical explanation for the relief that often accompanies a deep breath. Why this helps comes down to understanding lung surfactants not as one layer of fluid, but as multiple layers.
“Right at the air interface there is a slightly harder surface layer. Below that there are several layers that should be softer than the surface layer,” study co-author Maria Novaes-Silva described.
These layers function best when they exist in balance with each other, but sometimes they become out of balance. When they're out of order like this, the best way to adjust the layers is to take a deep breath. By causing the surfactants to stretch and contract more intensely, the lung fluid essentially rebuilds its outer layer.
“This is a state outside of thermodynamic equilibrium that can only be maintained through mechanical work,” Vermant said. He also cited previous clinical studies that showed that while lung compliance inevitably changes over time, it is exacerbated by constant shallow breathing.
Werman's team hopes their findings will help improve treatments for lung failure in adults. One way forward may even be to create artificial surfactants by identifying the components that make up each individual layer of liquid. In the meantime, now is as good a time as any to pause and take a deep—literally healing—breath.
