• About The Patch Expedition
• Climbing in Aid of Unicef
• Meet The Team
  • The Patch Team
• Corporate Sponsors
  • Become a Corporate Sponsor
• Training for Everest
  • Technical
  • Physical
  • Mental
  • Nutrition
• Climb Your Own Everest
• Climbing Everest
  • Everest Facts
  • The Gear
  • The History of Everest
  • The Route
  • Altitude and Illness
    • Our Bodies and Oxygen
    • Altitude and Oxygen
    • Acclimatisation
    • The Death Zone
    • Supplemental Oxygen
    • Sickness on the Big Hill
• FAQ's

Our Bodies and Oxygen

Put simply, oxygen is a crucial ingredient which allows our cells to produce energy, without it our cells will die and if our cells die eventually we will die. So how do we take the oxygen from the atmosphere and transport it to all the cells around our body?

Approximately 21% of the air in the earth’s atmosphere is made up of oxygen. Each time we breathe in oxygen is taken into our bodies from the surrounding atmosphere. We breathe in using two sets of muscles, the diaphragm which sits just below the lungs and the intercostals muscles which sit between the ribs. As the diaphragm and external intercostals contract the lungs expand down and out to increase their volume. The air from the atmosphere is then pushed through our mouth and nose, down our trachea, through our bronchi and bronchioles and into tiny air sacs called alveoli.

The oxygen molecules then diffuse from the alveoli into the capillaries where it is caught by the hemoglobin in our red blood cells. The oxygen rich blood is forced away from the lungs through a network of blood vessels to the heart and is pumped all around our body where the oxygen is transported into the cells ready to be used to make energy.

Deoxygenated blood is transported from the cells back to the lungs through our veins. Carbon dioxide, a byproduct of the energy making process, diffuses from the blood in the capillaries into the alveoli. This is then removed from the body when we breathe out.

This whole process is known as respiration.