Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Geronimo! Splat!
Dear Matthew:
The other day my wife was recounting her childhood story of how she leaped from the garage roof with her self-made parachute. She survived the crash landing but not without getting "the wind knocked out of her." What is this phenomenon? Why is it soooo hard to take that restoring breath?
-- Fred and Ethel, San Diego
Without going into yawn-inducing detail about respiratory physiology, suffice it to say that our lungs are just passive air bags that would like nothing better than to shrivel up and collapse. They're kept inflated by positive air pressure inside them and by a fluid layer that holds the lungs against a membrane that lines our rib cages. To breathe in, you have to constrict your diaphragm (a big flat muscle under your lungs) that draws the lungs down and expands your rib cage to draw your lungs out. This creates a momentary low-pressure zone, and the higher-pressure air rushes in to fill partial vacuum. If you can't move your diaphragm and rib cage, you can't breathe.
So when our would-be Wonder Woman launched herself from the roof, the heavy fall momentarily paralyzed her diaphragm and expelled some residual air that usually helps keep her lungs inflated. Once things are moving again and the panic is over, of course, then she was left to worry about getting the tar knocked out of her by Mom for pulling that stunt in the first place.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Geronimo! Splat!
Geronimo! Splat!
Dear Matthew:
The other day my wife was recounting her childhood story of how she leaped from the garage roof with her self-made parachute. She survived the crash landing but not without getting "the wind knocked out of her." What is this phenomenon? Why is it soooo hard to take that restoring breath?
-- Fred and Ethel, San Diego
Without going into yawn-inducing detail about respiratory physiology, suffice it to say that our lungs are just passive air bags that would like nothing better than to shrivel up and collapse. They're kept inflated by positive air pressure inside them and by a fluid layer that holds the lungs against a membrane that lines our rib cages. To breathe in, you have to constrict your diaphragm (a big flat muscle under your lungs) that draws the lungs down and expands your rib cage to draw your lungs out. This creates a momentary low-pressure zone, and the higher-pressure air rushes in to fill partial vacuum. If you can't move your diaphragm and rib cage, you can't breathe.
So when our would-be Wonder Woman launched herself from the roof, the heavy fall momentarily paralyzed her diaphragm and expelled some residual air that usually helps keep her lungs inflated. Once things are moving again and the panic is over, of course, then she was left to worry about getting the tar knocked out of her by Mom for pulling that stunt in the first place.
Comments