Out of Thin Air, Extraordinary Living
Greatness in the ordinary that we cannot see right in front of us
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TAK C. POON, MD, FACC
February 5, 2021 6 min read
An eagle soars. A person below hollers, “Hey, how’s the air up there? Must be nice, huh?” The eagle wonders, “What is air?”
Just hold your breath for a minute and you will experience the vital importance of this invisible thing everywhere. The science of air is amazing. The relationship of air to our life, health and body-mind-spirit wellbeing is intimate.
Today, it is more vital than ever to live extraordinarily with ordinary means. Let us pay just a little attention to what is all around us, and experience the art of living out of thin air.
. . .
Invisible and seemingly insubstantial, air can generate enormous powers. Warmer air gets thinner and lighter, so it rises. Cooler, heavier air comes in to fill in the space left behind. That produces wind, and from it, water currents, hence precipitation.
These currents can have magnitudes ranging from a gentle breeze to horrific hurricanes. All that weather and climate arise out of thin air just moving around.
“Air, I should explain,
becomes wind when it is agitated.”
Lucretius, Greek Philosopher, On the Nature of Things
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Chaos Theory in advanced mathematics formulates a certain domino effect. Under the right initial conditions, a butterfly flapping its wings can set off a sequence of events to result in a hurricane in another part of the globe.
This “butterfly effect” is really not that far-fetched in real life. One thing always leads to another and to another. You are here now because of that fateful moment when your parents first met.
Fourteen billion years after the Big Bang, if a freak meteor hadn’t hit the Earth 65 million years ago and killed over 95% of all living things, including the dinosaurs, none of us would be here today.
A person who recovered from a near-fatal heart attack once said, “In one moment, I turned my face and it became my life.” Pick up a good or a bad habit and you’ll experience how profoundly that can change your entire life.
. . .
The science of air imparts information and wisdom way beyond what our eyes can see.
“Facts are the air of scientists.
Without them you can never fly.”
Linus Pauling, Nobel Laureate
Breathing is a privilege we all have just by being alive. Science shows that since there was life, every living thing has been breathing the same re-cycled air on this planet. From the beginning of life, we all share the same breath. How extraordinary!
Carbon dioxide (CO2) makes up only 0.04% of the air in our bio-atmosphere. It is an integral part of the Earth’s carbon cycle. It governs human life and the fate of our planet.
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We breathe out less than 4% CO2 as exhaust. Astronauts tell us if CO2 builds up to as little as 4% it would kill us faster than the lack of oxygen.
CO2 in the air has increased over 50% since the Industrial Revolution 150 years ago. It acidifies the oceans by dissolving in water to form carbonic acid. Like a blanket, it warms the Earth by its greenhouse effect.
CO2 is part of the Carbon Cycle, which encompasses our breathing, plant photosynthesis and the air-ocean-rock exchange on Earth. In this cycle, Carbon emission has increased 10-fold in the past 100 years.
Regardless of what causes this rapid Carbon buildup, what matters is we humans are capable of doing something to lower it in order to save ourselves. Our lifestyle choices affect our own body as well as our planet.
Some elements may be small in percentage and still play a critical role. Like CO2, and humans, on the planet. It is each person’s choice how big a role to play, but everyone has a part in it.
Nobody is useless.
You give CO2 to feed plants while you’re alive
and the rest of you after.
And plants return the favor.
Metacardio© App
. . .
Oxygen makes up roughly half of the Earth’s Lithosphere. That means O2 gets fixed into solid minerals by oxidation, as in rust and crust.
In gas form, O2 makes up about 1/5 of our biosphere. It is mostly recycled by the respiration of living things. When combined with carbon and water, oxygen becomes carbohydrates, or carbs, as in our food supply.
We need O2 to breathe and make fire. Too much O2 can make a fire explode. Breathing too high a concentration of O2 can cause blindness, seizure, and scarring of the lungs. What we have in the air is just right. We’d better keep it that way.
Some people and events tend to suck all the oxygen out of the room. Certain favorite things, like music, art, love, are the oxygen of our lives. May you find your own oxygen and make a lifetime of breathing all worthwhile.
What you really want you won’t find it here.
A refrigerator magnet
. . .
Nitrogen (N2), a less known gas, makes up 4/5 of our air. It is a crucial building block of life as it gets “fixed” into biological protein, either by bacterial action or lightning.
In the science lab, when Nitrogen-bonded minerals in a flask get zapped with high voltage electricity, amino acids — the building blocks of protein — materialize. Bam! Chemistry becomes Biology.
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Rigorous research is underway today to convert plants into animal proteins, like eggs and meats, that are indistinguishable from the real McCoy. Some of this “plant meat” may have already come to a “burger” joint near you. If that works out as well as making cheese with yeasts, it may revolutionize our diet, health and ecosystem.
This flower is so pretty it almost looks plastic.
Ted Baxter, old MTM Show
. . .
Medical science does not know what drives us to breathe. We do know that changing our breathing pattern can alter many vital body functions, and vice versa. When you’re relaxed, you breathe more slowly. If you hyperventilate, you can pass out or even convulse with seizure.
Many relaxation practices, like meditation, are based on quiet breathing. Functional MRI brain scans have shown glaring changes when stress level plummets and mood elevates during such practices by Tibetan monks.
In Chinese and other Eastern traditions, the breath is called Chi. It represents the interface between the seen and the unseen. We breathe air as a concrete reality. Yet it contains more mystery than our eyes can see or our words can reach.
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.
What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
We can see it only if we believe it. That is more often true than “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Air, in plain sight, is one such example.
Eastern masters can see the vitality and wellness of a person in his or her Chi. The rest of us can benefit from the miracle of breathing by just paying a little more attention.
We can live a little more extraordinarily from breath to breath by being just a little more mindful of something as ordinary as air.
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WRITTEN BY
Tak C. Poon, MD, PharmD, ABHIM, FACC, Preventive Cardiologist, now developer of a non-profit wellness blog and a lifestyle habit-forming app at www.metacardio.org, and confessor of hard lessons I have learned in life.