How the Lungs Work
Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease that can drastically affects lung function. Watch these videos and learn about how your lungs work, and why feeling well is just part of the story when dealing with CF.
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How CF Affects The Lungs
To understand how CF affects the lungs, it is important first to know how healthy lungs work. The lungs take in fresh oxygen and get rid of carbon dioxide and other gaseous waste products so that other parts of the body can function properly.
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Trachea and Bronchi
When you breathe in, the mucus membranes in your mouth and nose warm and moisten the air that passes through your throat and into your trachea or windpipe.
Your trachea divides into the left and right bronchi, like a tree branch. Each bronchus divides again and again, becoming narrower and narrower.
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Alveoli Expanded
These branches lead to millions of alveoli, which are small, thin air sacs that look like clusters of balloons. When you breathe in, the “balloons” expand. When you breathe out, the “balloons” relax and air is released.
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Alveoli Relaxted
The oxygen you breathe in binds to hemoglobin, a protein in your blood that gives red blood cells their color, and is carried from your lungs to body tissues. Hemoglobin also has carbon dioxide bound to it, which it passes into the alveoli within a fraction of a second each time you inhale.
When you exhale, the carbon dioxide leaves the alveoli, and the oxygen-rich blood returns to your heart. This exchange of gases allows your body to release carbon dioxide as a waste product and retain the oxygen necessary for your tissues and organs to function properly.
Lung health: feeling well is just part of the story
You or your child may be feeling well, but it is important to know that CF is still active in the lungs and can cause damage. Even when lung function tests are normal, they may not tell the whole story about what is going on inside the lungs. CF affects the small airways deep in the lungs at first, so damage can occur before symptoms become obvious. But as the effects of CF reach the larger airways, symptoms such as coughing or difficulty breathing may increase.
Lung damage can be hidden… even in young children or in patients who have good lung function
This 4-year-old boy had few symptoms, with little coughing or wheezing, but this image shows that lung damage has already taken place.
This image shows significant, but hidden, lung damage in a 21-year-old woman with normal lung function.
