[ intro ]
Whew!
Made it!
Squeaks and I raced allll the way down here!
He won, but I finally caught up.
And now we’re both kind of out of breath,
huh?
That happens sometimes when you’ve been
moving a lot, like if you’re running around.
Your body needs more air to keep your muscles
pumping,
so you start breathing in and out very fast!
Sometimes people call being out of breath
like that “getting winded.”
But other times, when they say “getting
winded,” they mean something different:
getting the wind knocked out of them.
That’s when the air gets pushed out of someone’s
lungs very suddenly and it becomes hard for
them to breathe for a minute or two.
Most of the time it happens because the person
fell down and landed on their back,
like at the playground, or they were playing
sports and a ball accidentally hit them in
the stomach.
It happened to me once while I was diving
for a catch in softball
It can be a little scary to have trouble breathing
for a minute,
but getting the wind knocked out of you isn’t
dangerous, and it goes away pretty soon.
The muscles the person uses to breathe just
get a little shock,
and it takes them a minute to start moving
normally again.
You can actually feel these muscles for yourself!
Try taking a deep breath.
Do you feel how your chest and stomach rise
and fall?
Now let’s try it again, but this time we’ll
put a hand just above our stomachs,
right under the bones in our rib cages.
Those are the bones around your lungs in your
chest.
Right there, where you put your hand, is where
your diaphragm is.
That’s the main muscle we use to breathe.
When we breathe in, it moves down, making
our lungs expand and open up so the air rushes
in.
Then, when we breathe out, it moves up again,
making our lungs smaller and pushing the air
back out.
When someone falls backwards or a ball hits
them in the stomach,
this muscle gets a big, sudden shock that
it wasn’t expecting.
That can make it clench really hard for a
minute.
Try clenching your fist, like this.
It’s pretty hard to pull open your fingers
when you’re doing that, right?
Well, when someone gets the wind knocked out
of them and their diaphragm clenches,
it can’t move very easily, either.
And that makes it hard to breathe.
Pretty soon, though, the muscle starts to
relax again, and they go back to breathing
normally.
I learned about all this whenI dove for that
softball, and the fall knocked the wind out
of me
And I also learned that there were some things
I could do to help my diaphragm relax faster.
Pulling my knees up to my body helped, and
so did breathing slowly,
instead of trying to pant quickly.
I breathed in through my nose and out through
my mouth,
and pretty soon the feeling went away.
And once I understood more about what was
happening and how to help it go away faster,
the next time I got winded wasn’t so scary!
It’s always important to tell a grownup
if you fall or get hurt.
But when we learn more about how our bodies
work, it can help us know what to do to feel
better faster.
Thanks for joining us!
Do you have questions about breathing, or
your body,
or anything at all?
We have a website where you can send them
to us!
Just ask a grown-up to help you go to patreon.com/scishowkids
to check it out.
We’ll see you next time, here at the Fort!
[ outro ]
