• Question: how much do ur lungs change from when ur a baby and an adult

    Asked by anon-182305 to Liza on 19 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Liza Selley

      Liza Selley answered on 19 Jun 2018:

      Hi tylerbeswick

      The biggest change happens when a baby is born- the fluid in the lungs is replaced by air which encourages blood vessels around the lungs to get wider to let oxygen flow around the body. Over the next 6 months the baby’s lungs will develop a lot of new air sacs. At birth you have 50-70 million air sacs but by the time you reach adulthood you will have grown 300 million! In fact, most of these will have grown by the time the child is 3 when their lungs look a lot like an adult’s and the amount of air that they can hold is much bigger than when they were a baby. As children grow, the size of the air sacs will grow, enabling them to hold much more air.

      Here is a really good website that explains this well 🙂 https://www.blf.org.uk/support-for-you/how-childrens-lungs-grow/after-birth

Comments