Interesting article attempting to explain another physical action. I find their comment interesting:
"One mystery the study was unable to solve is the reason behind why humans tend to sigh more when
stressed."
The person who wrote this article may not have worked in a bureaucracy!! It is a lot more accept to sigh rather than to say @#$%%$)&*.
----------------------------------------------------------
Lung Health Depends on Frequent Sighing Laboratory Equipment
02/08/2016
Lauren Scrudato, Associate Editor
Sighing isn’t just a way to express emotion. According to a study published today in Nature, sighing is a necessary process to maintain overall health – and is done much more frequently than we may notice.
A research team led by Mark Krasnow, of Stanford University and Jack Feldman of UCLA, found that the human body generates a sigh about a dozen times per hour, and the repetition of that extra-deep breath preserves lung function.
The team scanned about 19,000 gene expressions in the brain cells of laboratory mice, which can sigh up to 40 times an hour. They found that a group of about 200 neurons in the brain stem make and release two peptides that activate the mice’s muscles to release a sigh.
The same set of peptides are found in humans, and are already known to be a factor in breathing and sighing.
When the researchers blocked one of the peptides, the amount of times the mice sighed was cut in half. After silencing both peptides, the mice were unable to sigh at all.
The study proves that the brain’s breathing center not only controls the pace of our breathing, but the type of breath we take.
“It’s made up of small numbers of different kinds of neurons. Each functions like a button that turns on a different type of breath,” said Krasnow, a biochemist at Stanford. “One button programs regular breaths, another sighs and the others could be for yawns, sniffs, coughs and maybe even laughs and cries.”
The purpose of the subtle yet repetitious sigh is to re-inflate alveoli - the delicate, small sacs in the lungs that control the body’s flow of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Occasionally, individual sacs will collapse, and without a sigh, the lungs will begin to fail.
“When alveoli collapse, they compromise the ability of the lung to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide,” said Feldman. “The only way to pop them open again is to sigh, which brings in twice the volume of a normal breath. If you don’t sigh, your lungs will fail over time.”
The discovery could eventually lead to drugs that trigger more instances of sighing, aiding patients who would otherwise need the assistance of ventilators to breathe normally.
One mystery the study was unable to solve is the reason behind why humans tend to sigh more when stressed.
“There is certainly a component of sighing that relates to an emotional state,” said Feldman. “It may be that neurons in the brain areas that process emotion are triggering the release of the sigh neuropeptides — but we don’t know that.”
“One of the holy grails in neuroscience is figuring out how the brain controls behavior. Our finding gives us insights into mechanisms that may underlie much more complex behaviors,” added Feldman.
www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2016/02/lung-health-depends-frequent-sighing
