Hey guys welcome to another video in this video I'm going to try and help you guys memorize the respiratory system in under five minutes. I find that the best way to approach these things is basically for you to try and practice drawing them out yourself so you get a blank piece of paper and you start just practice sketching out the respiratory system and its components from scratch Now in order for you to do that you need to have some sort of systematic way of recalling each of the structures and this is where I'm going to try and help you out. When drawing the respiratory system we're going to split it up into starting off with just drawing the general body that's obvious and then we're going to start off by filling it in with the airways which is basically the actual tubes that air passes through and then lastly we're going to draw the surrounding structures of those airways so that would be the lungs, their ribs and the diaphragm.
So let's take a look at that specifically. In terms of the acronyms, what we're going to be using for the airways is metabolic poison leaves the body by airways, which sort of makes sense because carbon dioxide is a metabolic poison that leaves the body by airways. Now the surrounding structures, the acronym we're going to be using is just continuing on with the poison theme, lung poisoning results.
death. So try and remember these two sentences and acronyms and that will really help you organize your thoughts when you're trying to practice drawing out the system. So let's take a look at the airway first. Again remember that the acronym is metabolic poison leaves the body by airways in this specific order. And so here is the airway.
M stands for mouth and nose, that's the initial entry point of air into the body, which connects to a space called the pharynx and that is the, that's basically another way of saying throat. And we have L for larynx which is the otherwise known as the voice box which contains vocal cords in order for us to be able to produce sound. T for trachea, you can see that the trachea is a tube that has cartilages around it and the cartilages offer important physical structural support to prevent the airways from collapsing. We've got B for bronchi so the trachea branches off into these two distinctive segments called the bronchi and the bronchi also have cartilages surrounding them as well which also support the airway from collapsing.
You can see that the bronchi branches off into smaller and smaller and smaller branches. At the very edges and at the very tips you have the bronchioles, which is a very very narrow tube that does not have any cartilages by the way, that pass the air into these air sacs called the alveoli and that is where gas exchange happens. You can see that it is surrounded by these capillaries.
Taking a closer look at the alveoli it is basically empty space inside. And so what happens is when we breathe in fresh air, the oxygen diffuses into the bloodstream, whereas the carbon dioxide diffuses out of the bloodstream into the air sac, and when we expel the air, we're getting rid of the carbon dioxide. So this is how deoxygenated blood becomes oxygenated.
So that is how we would draw the airways in order. What about the surrounding structures? Well, obviously you have the lungs.
that are connected to each of the bronchi. So the acronym is Lung Poisoning Results and Deaths, so L stands for lung. Then the P stands for the pleural membrane, which is basically the membrane that lines the lungs.
The pleural membrane contains something called the pleural fluid and the whole purpose and function of this is to allow a bit of lubrication and reduce the friction of the lungs as we breathe in and as we breathe out. Then R stands for the ribs which plays a very important function of inspiring and expiring air and the ribs are connected by the intercostal muscles which contract and relax to change the position of the ribs. Finally we have this dome shaped muscle called the diaphragm which also takes part in breathing in and breathing out by contracting and relaxing. as it contract it sort of flattens out and increases the volume of the thoracic cavity and when it sort of relaxes it goes back into this dome shape which reduces the volume of the thoracic cavity and that's a really big part of inspiration and expiration and i'm gonna go through that in the next video with you but overall that covers all the structures of the respiratory system Now it's time to put all of this into practice. Remember the whole point is for you to be able to just get a blank sheet of paper and just draw this yourself.
Now when you take a look at a diagram like this it might look a little bit intimidating because you know how the hell are you supposed to draw that? But I just want you to tell, I just want you to know that you don't have to be an artist with this. You just need to draw the very basic structures. It just needs to resemble what the actual diagram looks like and that will help you immensely in actually retaining the information.
So I'm going to show you an example of how I might practice drawing the respiratory system and labeling and all the structures using the acronyms that we've discussed here. Just before you guys head off, I would encourage you guys to check out my Patreon channel. I'm sure you'll find a lot of these resources helpful for you.
I have a topic-based exam coaching series like this, and just a bunch of other resources as well for IGCSE biology, chemistry, and physics. So if you guys are interested, just check it out by clicking the link above in this video or go to the description box below. Otherwise, it was great seeing you again and I will see you in the next video.
Thank you.