Take Note Everyone, Sighing Helps Keep You Alive

Hopeless romantics and sassy humans everywhere rejoice; all of your sighing hasn't been in vain.

It's so good for you in fact, you’d actually die without it.

Neurologists have now identified the precise region in the brain that transforms normal breathing into life-giving sighs. For those of you interested in lengthy details; the findings of their studies have been published here. And for those of you interested in the basics, read on.

Physiologically speaking, sighing is a way of keeping your lungs inflated. A sigh starts out as a normal breath, but before you exhale, you take a second breath on top of it. And, unbeknownst to ourselves, we do this about 12 times an hour, and even more so when we’re nervous, stressed or anxious.

And it’s a good thing we do.

Sighing is necessary roughly every five minutes or so, otherwise the alveoli will slowly collapse, causing lung failure. Not ideal.

That’s why patients in early iron lungs had such problems, as the machines hadn't been programmed to give patients sighs as well as regular breaths.

So basically, keep on expressing your distaste, falling hopelessly in love and feeling hard done by with your sighs - as they're the best, and doing more for you than you realise.

(H/T - www.mentalfloss.com)