Page 116 - Magnificence Everywhere

THE LUNGS' IMPRESSIVE DESIGN
Your lungs are organs that adjust themselves according to your movements.
When you run, your lungs work faster and meet your increased oxygen needs while
they work slower when you relax, yet never stop. Throughout your life, your lungs
continuously work like an air pump. They pump air in and out. As they do so, they
operate in harmony with other components of the respiratory system because, in
order to breathe, the lungs alone are not sufficient. One needs an exterior power to
make the lungs work. This power is provided by the muscles that lie between the
ribs and the diaphragm, just under the rib cage.
Look at yourself as you breathe. You will see that your ribs move outwards. At
that moment, the diaphragm under the lung expands downwards and the lungs get
bigger. The lungs draw in the air from the trachea. When exhaled, the rib cage is
drawn inwards and the diaphragm under the ribs moves upwards. As the lungs are
compressed, the air present in small air sacs is pushed outside through the trachea.
Running, laughing, walking, lying down… You do these movements without
thinking, yet during all these different movements, an automatic respiration control
system is at work in your lungs which determines the oxygen needs of your body.
During motion, the body cell activities increase and the cells consume more power
and energy. For this reason, approximately 100 trillion cells in the body need more
oxygen than usual. Besides this increase in the need for oxygen, the carbon dioxide
produced by the cells must be expelled from the body immediately. If the increased
demand for oxygen is not met, the whole body will suffer. Because of this, respira-
tion increases. In other words, the lungs work faster.
This vital situation is again accomplished by means of a miraculous system. The
region called the "brain stem" contains receptors which continuously control the
carbon dioxide level in the blood. If the carbon dioxide concentration gets too high,
the receptors in the brain stem signal the respiratory centers to increase the rate and
depth of breathing. In addition to the brain stem, there are also various receptors in
the lung that modify breathing. These receptors respond when the lung and chest
wall swell from internal pressure in a way as to prevent inhalation. In this case,
Magnificence Everywhere without ever stopping.
these receptors send signals to the respiratory center to decrease the depth of respi-
ration. These processes are repeated every day, every second, and every moment

It is surely impossible to claim that this system, consisting of many balances
complementing each other came into existence by itself as the result of blind coinci-
dences. The respiratory system of the human body is just one of the examples of the

114 creation art of Allah.