My grandfather died when I was small. I remembered asking my grandmother why did he die and she answered me that “he forgot to breathe” maybe because I was too small to understand what she is explaining. Does a person really forget how to breathe?

What comes into your mind if you hear the words “respiratory system”? It is the system where air is inhaled and exhaled. In inhalation, air comes in your nose where air is filtered by this tiny hair strands called cilia, going back, from the nose through your pharynx or throat through your larynx or voice box through your trachea or windpipe from your trachea, air moves into two large tubes in your chest called bronchi, each bronchus leads to one lung and vice-versa. Within each lung, the large bronchus divides into smaller bronchi, which lead into smaller passageways called bronchioles. The bronchioles continue to divide until they reach the dead ends called alveoli. The alveoli are where oxygen is transferred into the blood cell. Speaking of lungs, who can describe the inside of the lungs? It’s like the branches of the tree, the branches will be your bronchi the smaller branches will be your bronchioles and the leaves are your alveoli (Source: Miller & Levine Biology by Kenneth R. Miller, Ph.D and Joseph S. Levine, Ph.D).

Now let’s go to the diseases and how to prevent it according to Wikipedia. COPD or the Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, the causes of this are smoking, air pollution, occupational exposures, and genetics. Just a trivia, in 2012, COPD ranked as the third-leading cause of death, killing over 3 million people (source: http://who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/). To prevent this, you should quit or don’t smoke tobacco, tobacco smoking is the most common cause of COPD. COPD treatments include vaccinations, rehabilitation, and often inhaled bronchodilators and steroids. Some people may