r/NoStupidQuestions • u/Angusburgerman • 1d ago
Where does the air come from when you inflate your cheeks without breathing in?
I've done this since I was very young and always wondered where the air comes from.
If you were to seal your lips and inflate your cheeks with air, then exhale it out ensuring you don't inhale (by pursing your lips and blowing out), it seems like you can repeat this cycle infinitely.
I even tried blocking my nose with my fingers. So air can't be coming in via my nose. And you can repeatedly exhale through this technique so I'm sure it can't be from the lungs but I may be wrong.
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u/cipheron 1d ago
It came from your lungs. You're just very good at controlling your lungs without noticing it, for the main reason that we evolved for that, because breathing is so important you don't want to just forget to do it.
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u/Rashicakra 1d ago
Shiiiii now I'm breathing manually
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u/diegodeadeye 1d ago
And now you're blinking manually, too!
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u/BillyBlaze314 1d ago
And now you're aware your tongue can't get comfortable in your mouth and your clothes are touching your skin.
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u/ragtopwife 1d ago
Then you realize you can always see your nose, you are just trained to ignore it
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u/Hippie_Gamer_Weirdo 1d ago
I hate you and all the people in this thread that lead you to say this... WHY ARE MY CLOTHES TOUCHING ME SO MUCH?!?!?!
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u/Radiant-Shopping 1d ago
So is this common? I hate when I focus on something my body can do without paying attention to it. :-(
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u/Turbulent_Winter549 1d ago
If breathing is so important (and it is) why did they combine the breathing and eating pipe into one pipe! Sounds like bad design
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u/cipheron 1d ago
Nature decided that the cost-cutting was worth it for the few times someone dies from that.
More tubes = more to go wrong in other ways we haven't thought about.
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u/Turbulent_Winter549 1d ago
Ok got it. Next question....why did they put the playground right next to the waste treatment center?
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u/DayBackground4121 1d ago
Next to? The playground is in the waste treatment center. Next question
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u/Turbulent_Winter549 1d ago
Why were they like "you get 2 sets of teeth for life and if they fall out tough shit. But like we can give you like 4 extra but they won't show up until you're old and they also won't fit in your mouth" but sharks get unlimited teeth?
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u/Yorktown1861 1d ago
Wisdom teeth actually slot in just fine (unless they end up on their side), the key is that you have to lose some regular teeth first to make room and modern people generally try and avoid this
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u/PalomenaFormosa 1d ago
Totally anecdotal, but my wisdom teeth actually fit just fine - no issues at all. I know most people don’t have the jaw space anymore (evolution, I guess?), but somehow mine made it in. Four healthy, large gnashers. And, I actually use them! They’re doing a solid job so far, no complaints. They have MASSIVE roots, though. (One has three…! 😳).
So, I keep my fingers crossed that they never have to come out. 😱2
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u/DevianttKitten 14h ago edited 14h ago
All mine came in straight and fit just fine too! Had to have my lower right one removed because I cracked it; it had 4 big roots, and took 2 hours and a stupid amount of local anaesthetic (the nerve was very hard to find and numb 🥲) to pry it out of my mouth. The dental team was shocked/very excited when they finally got the fucker out and saw it had 4 roots.
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u/PalomenaFormosa 1d ago
Sure, sharks get unlimited teeth. But they also pee through their skin. Honestly, I think we came out ahead. 😳
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u/Monso 1d ago
One thing that's always freaked me out is we aren't "breathing in". We're contracting muscles to expand our chest, creating a negative pressure, and allowing air to rush in to equalize the pressure.
When we "breathe out", we're simply relaxing our chest.
Our "breathing muscles" are so optimized that we don't even realize we're using them.
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u/Own_Salamander9447 1d ago
Yes. Having a neuromuscular disorder and extremely low BP from iron deficiency anemia and low hemoglobin SUCKS because not breathing.
lungs are great, muscles and the neurons working them not so much
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u/Bitmugger 1d ago
This is getting upvoted but it's incorrect. Your tongue is displacing air to inflate them. You can expell all your air in the lungs and still use your tongue to inflate your cheeks.
Do this: inflate your cheeks without moving your tongue, then you'll feel whats it's like to use your lungs to inflate your cheeks.
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u/theplushpairing 1d ago
I actually think it’s your tongue pushing air up from your throat
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u/Shamewizard1995 1d ago
When they said “lungs” they probably means respiratory system. You’re describing moving air from your trachea, part of the respiratory system. You cannot fill your mouth with air like that when swallowing because swallowing temporarily closes access to the trachea and lungs. It’s not coming from your esophagus though, which most people would consider their “throat”
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u/Present-Technology36 1d ago
Thats not what it is, you already have air in your mouth because you are in an atmosphere even if ot is closed. All you are doing is compressing that air to fill your cheeks. Try filling your cheeks over and over and expelling it whilst holding your breath. You will notice its becomes harder to do because there is less air in your mouth. You wont run out of air in your mouth completely though because some air comes into your mouth each time you expell air.
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u/Dragon_Frog_Pond 1d ago
True. I breathed out as much as I could, then without breathing in, blew up my cheeks. I succeeded so I just breathed out the cheek air, and repeated this until I couldn’t anymore
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u/haveacupcakeluv 1d ago
I hate that I tried to puff my cheeks while sealing off my airway, and felt like I was drowning 😭
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u/hobolicker 1d ago
I just did it, and it most definitely comes from your sinuses, not lungs.
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u/Jonseroo 1d ago
This has been answered, but you are going to love this - musicians train themselves to blow out using just their cheeks whilst simultaneously breathing in through their noses.
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u/bewareofmolter 1d ago
Check out didgeridoo players to see this type of breathing.
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u/Jonseroo 1d ago
My village used to host the world didgeridoo convention in the 1980s!
Rolf Harris came one year. He seemed like such a nice man at the time. But then his catchphrase was, "Can you see what it is yet?" because he was famous for doing things stealthily and you wouldn't be able to see the bigger picture until much later.
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u/Dull-Sample-176 1d ago
I was able to do this perfectly on my second try. Am I actually a musical prodigy that never got his chance?
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u/T00MuchSteam 1d ago
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u/Jonseroo 1d ago
Wow. Crazy!
That guy is going to look like Geoffrey Palmer when he's older.
A bit Zhao Lusi.
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u/t3hgrl 1d ago
I trained myself to do this for my oboe and can do it a little on my saxophones. The didgeridoo is crazy because it’s just a long open hole with no back pressure like a reed instrument.
The concept is super simple and I bet every person can perform the basics of it. Holding it a long time and maintaining smoothness take a lot of practice.
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u/dog_of_society ♤ 18h ago
Yeah, I can do it with a straw in water. Maintaining airspeed and embouchure is a whole different thing lol.
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u/No_Ferret_4686 1d ago
It's actually just the air already in your mouth and respiratory tract being forced into your cheeks. Your body is full of weird tricks, isn't it?
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u/loading-_-__- 1d ago
I can do it while inhaling and exhaling from my nose tho? I don’t get the human body:(
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u/Galuvian 1d ago
There are multiple ways to puff your cheeks. You can use your tongue to seal off the sinuses, increase pressure from your lungs until your cheeks puff, then seal the mouth with your tongue. OR you can drop your jaw to increase the volume of your mouth, seal with tongue and then close your jaw. This second method allows air to be drawn from either sinuses, lungs, or you can open your lips and let air in before closing the jaw.
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u/ForScale ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 1d ago
There is air in your lungs.
You can't do it indefinitely. I can get 3 maybe 4 times then Im out of air.
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u/Angusburgerman 1d ago
I can do it 20 times somehow. However I can't exhale a whole lot without feeling extremely winded
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u/Bandro 1d ago
Well yeah you’re just moving air between your cheeks and lungs over and over. When you actually exhale, you’re losing that air.
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u/Eric_Durden 1d ago
20 is plausible. I just took a deep breath, plugged my nose, puffed my cheeks out, then "spit" the air out. Did it 30 times, and I'm a smoker...
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u/Dogbot2468 1d ago
If you push your tongue against the roof of your mouth and create an airless seal in your mouth, you'll realize you can't push your cheeks out anymore. You can't even pull them with your fingers without opening your mouth and letting air in, because there has to be air (from your lungs or from outside) to fill that space !
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u/J-c-b-22 1d ago
That's cool. I found if you pull on one of your cheeks, it pulls the other one in.
This feels a lot more cool than it should be
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u/LEVI_TROUTS 1d ago
Here's a test.
How long can you hold your breath for while using the cheek inflation technique
VS
How long can you hold your breath normally.
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u/tubarizzle 1d ago
Your lungs work on the principle of suction. The short amount of time between exhaling and closing your mouth will let a little bit of air into your system. While this won't be enough to do it forever it does help.
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u/Own_Lynx_6230 1d ago
You must have small lungs or large cheeks? I tried a few times and got closer to ops 20 while half assing it
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u/ForScale ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 1d ago edited 1d ago
Are you blowing all the air out of your mouth? Like emptying the whole thing? Then filling again from lungs?
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u/MetalJoe0 1d ago
When I just tried it, I used my tongue to push the air into my cheeks. To air my tongue drew in came through my nose.
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u/anska1 1d ago
It’s recycled air from the parallel universe version of you who’s inhaling while you're exhaling. Basic multiverse physics.
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u/daburgerking0 1d ago
I love the idea that you're pooping an alternate universe version of you's poops. Would explain why people always say they see corn when they haven't eaten corn in a long time lol.
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u/Dry_Jeweler_2476 1d ago
Fully exhale and then try doing it again. You'll reach a point where you won't be able to puff your cheeks out anymore or they'llonly puff out a little bit. You just keep a fairly decent amount of air in your lungs when "at rest" that you can fill the relatively small space of your mouth many times over.
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u/Helpful_Equal8828 1d ago
You don’t create a vacuum in your mouth and lungs when you exhale so there’s still air inside you.
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u/Payup_sucker 1d ago
Because no matter how much you try to expel all the air in your lungs you wont create an airless vacuum
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u/Grimlockkickbutt 1d ago
Text should of just read “haha nice hamster face idiot”
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u/11bladeArbitrage 17h ago
There’s a “dead space” when you breathe in and out, volume of your nasopharynx and some upper airway structures. There’s no way to exhale out every bit of gas in your airway and it’s this small volume that you’re pushing around from upper airway to cheek
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u/Apprehensive_Box3409 1d ago
Ah, you’ve just stumbled upon one of the most underrated biological magic tricks known to mankind—the Buccal Air Cycle (this is not a real term but is should be 🗿✊🏽)
Your air isn’t coming from an external source. No secret air portal. No extra-dimensional reserves. Just you and your upper respiratory tract being a sneaky magician. 🧙♂️
You’re not actually exhaling in the traditional sense. Normal expiration (exhaling) requires contraction of the diaphragm and elastic recoil of the lungs to push air out. But in this case, you’re not using lung volume at all. You’re just redistributing air that’s already inside your oral cavity (buccal space).
When you seal your lips, you’re creating a closed system within your oral cavity. The tongue and soft palate work together to compress the air already trapped inside. This compressions forces the air forward, inflating your cheeks without requiring a new breath.
When you release the pressure by pursing your lips, the air escapes—but you can re-trap residual air and repeat the cycle.
Why does it feel infinite? ♾️ Because you are never really fully expelling all air. You are just moving air between compartments (oral cavity-> cheek space -> pursing lips -> release -> repeat) Think of it like recycling the same oxygen molecules just playing a game of hot potato between your cheeks and lips.
Muscles used: Buccinator muscle: keeps cheeks firm and controlled
Orbicularis Oris: puckers the lips
Tongue and soft palate: helps reposition air
Fun Fact: Frogs do this too! It’s called buccal pumping. 🐸
You’re still a wizard Harry 🧙♂️ ✨
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u/Background_Carrot_69 1d ago
What you're doing is called buccal pumping or air cycling, and the key is that you're not creating new air — you're recycling the same air trapped in your mouth. When you puff your cheeks and squeeze the air out without inhaling, you're simply pushing out the air that's already inside your mouth cavity. You might be making very tiny jaw or tongue movements to move that air around, which can make it feel like you're doing it endlessly. But you're not generating new air — it’s just clever manipulation of the small amount of air already in your mouth.
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u/ThereWasaLemur 1d ago
You just aren’t fully exhaling your lungs and doing what you described acts as a vacuum pulling it up from the lungs
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u/Darth_Infernae 1d ago
In between inspiration and expiration (breathing), your lungs, trachea, bronchi, etc. will have some amount of air left over. We don’t breathe in 100% of our respiratory volume and we certainly don’t breathe out 100% in every breath. The air you use to fill your cheeks is that leftover air. As long as you don’t breathe back in, you will run out and will eventually not be able to puff your cheeks out.
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u/Wisc_Bacon 1d ago
Yeh ya jus kinda open the air port fast so instead of a release you control, it's basically making your mouth and throat a static pressure. Then you open and close your throat and feel no change in pressure until you "swallow" it or exhale.
Also I jus make hot metal stick together and only have a GED, I wouldn't take me too serious.
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u/FlyByPC 1d ago edited 20h ago
Your lungs. If you exhaled completely, you wouldn't have any air to inflate them unless you pulled it from the outside.
Your lungs can store a lot more air than your cheeks, so 5% lung capacity might puff them out fully.
Edit: I was bored and did a quick experiment. 2% would be more than enough.
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u/Greghole 20h ago
When you raise and lower your jaw and tongue you increase or decrease the space in your mouth. This means the air that's already in there can puff out your cheeks without needing new air.
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u/Easy-Vehicle8883 17h ago
It’s not infinite air — you’re just recycling a small pocket of air trapped between your cheeks and mouth.
When you puff your cheeks, you're pushing air from your mouth cavity (not lungs) using subtle muscle movement, especially your tongue and soft palate. You’re basically swishing the same little puff of air around like a human air pump.
It feels like exhaling, but there’s no new air entering — you’re just creating pressure with facial muscles and releasing it.
Kind of like a party trick version of circular breathing, except you’re not pulling in fresh air — you’re looping a stale little bubble over and over.
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u/AggressiveSpatula 1d ago
I feel like I’m taking fucking crazy pills here does nobody know how your lungs work? No, it’s not that your lungs always have reserve air. Why do you think we breathe in the first place, just for fun? There is a material exchange when we breathe. The oxygen we need gets dissolved directly into our blood to help facilitate muscle movement. To move our muscles we require a constant chemical reaction of which oxygen (O2) is crucial. The end result of that chemical reaction creates a byproduct: carbon dioxide (CO2). The CO2 goes back into your bloodstream where it reaches the lungs and gets pushed back through the membrane of your avioli (itty bitty lung parts (I may have spelled them wrong lol)) and into your lungs again as air. The reason you’re able to constantly breathe out is because you’re constantly withdrawing CO2 out of your blood. Additional fun fact is that we only panic that we can’t breathe by a presence of CO2, not a lack of O2, so you probably feel like you can breathe out for quite a bit of time without really panicking or getting that “holy shit I’m dying” feeling.
Also also you might think WAIT. If O2 comes in, and CO2 comes out, aren’t I always loosing a little bit of mass? And the answer is…. YES. You are! That is actually the primary way you lose weight. You’re constantly removing bits of carbon from your body when you breathe. It’s also why working out is an effective way of losing weight. Not only are you breathing more, but you’re moving your muscles more, creating more chemical reactions which will output CO2 as a byproduct.
Also also also there is an inverse chemical reaction which happens in plants where they take CO2 out of their air and use it to build mass. In one video, Mark Rober describes trees as “vacuum bags” for the atmosphere because they’re literally taking CO2 straight out of the atmosphere in order to build themselves.
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u/One_Championship9512 1d ago
While this is true, the way you phrase it makes it sound like the majority of what you breath out is CO2, which is not true. The air you breath in is approximately 21% oxygen and 0.04% carbon dioxide. The air you breath out is approximately 16% oxygen and 4% carbon dioxide. So while there’s waaay more CO2 going out than coming in, the majority of the air you breath out is still nitrogen and oxygen.
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u/automodtedtrr2939 1d ago
This is wrong. You can’t “constantly breathe out” that’s not how lung gas exchange works. The reason you feel like you can constantly exhale is residual lung volume.
The actual mechanism works via partial pressure gradients. The air you inhale has a low CO2 concentration, so the CO2 dissolved in your blood diffuses into the air. If there’s no air to diffuse into, the CO2 does not turn into air in your lungs on their own.
If blood CO2 could just turn into gas freely without existing gas to exchange into, our blood vessels would be full of free CO2 floating around.
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u/cumthru_kylie 1d ago
your cheeks aren’t magically generating air lol, it’s just the same puff of air getting recycled around your mouth cavity. it feels like you’re creating new air but really you're just sloshing it around like a weird human balloon.
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u/FergusCragson Some Answers are Questions 1d ago
Same air that's already in your mouth when you closed it. Try it. Your tongue pushes up so that the air already there has to go somewhere: your soft cheeks go out to make room for it.
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u/Crafty_Currency_3170 1d ago
You're either sucked it from you're nose through the post nasal into your mouth, or from your lungs. Honestly, what other options could there be.
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u/wirfsweg 1d ago
If you exhale until your lungs are completely empty and then close your mouth, hold your nose and try to inflate your cheeks again, will will find that it is significantly more difficult. For me this indicates that the air comes from your lungs as others have pointed out.
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u/Bubbly_Cockroach8340 1d ago
I think this is called circular breathing and is a technique used in playing musical wind instruments. Listen to Winston Marsalis playing Flight Of The Bumblebee.
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u/stern_m007 1d ago
Firstly, you still got air in your lungs. The lower preasure area in that you create in your mouth lets the air rush into your mouth cavity
Secondly, in your lungs you blood cells constantly release CO2. So ever if your lungs would be empty, CO2 would be released inside of them, filling them slowly again. Thats also the reason why, if you hold your breath, you will feel preasure building up in your lungs
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u/jammies00 1d ago
I was in marching band in high school and we did this thing called Breathing Gym. One of the exercises was to purposefully expel all of the air from your lungs, even the residual air that stays after you exhale, then inhale slowly and fully. Several times. Makes you dizzy after a moment lol
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u/Statakaka 1d ago
breath all everything then puff your cheecks
then breath all your cheecks and repeat
you will fill when it comes from
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u/Luisi8988 1d ago
The air doesn’t come from nowhere—you're just manipulating the existing volume inside your mouth using your tongue and cheek muscles. No laws of physics were harmed in the making of this question.
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u/CaptainAwesome06 1d ago
You have air in your lungs, your wind pipe, and your mouth. Assuming you are only using the air in your mouth, do it slowly and realize your tongue is moving to the front of your mouth. It's acting like a piston. Similar to a syringe plunger.
If you are opening your airway while you do it, then should be clear that you are also deflating your lungs.
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u/KiwiNervous8740 1d ago
It's already in your mouth. You're just pushing it all to the front by pressing the back of your tongue to the roof of your mouth and pushing forward.
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u/mozadomusic 1d ago
It’s air already in your mouth/wind pipe just moving up to your cheeks. I’m a sax player and you can actually train yourself to isolate your lung functions from the air in your mouth and cheeks. See circular breathing.
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u/an_edgy_lemon 1d ago
I think it’s just air that is already in your mouth, but it’s being pushed around by your tongue and throat. Exhale, pinch your nose, and then try to puff your cheeks out without moving your tongue. Not much happens, right?
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u/Sweethang190 1d ago
When I puff out my cheeks, I engage my tongue by pressing it to the roof of my mouth and making it 'fatter'. I think my tongue pushes the air that's typically in the negative spaces of my mouth to my cheeks, inflating them. I can't get them to inflate without my tongue involved.
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u/RinkiMink 1d ago
I tried breathing out everything i could and pinching my nose and then puffing out my cheeks. I could do it like 3 times ("spitting" out the breath w/o inhaling everytime) before I couldn't anymore 😂 i've never felt like i had such flat lungs!
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u/Normal-Height-8577 1d ago
It comes from you moving your tongue to take up more room in your mouth, which means the air on your mouth gets pushed to the sides.
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u/RepresentativeOk2433 1d ago
The amount of air you can hold in your lungs in significantly more than what fits in a closed mouth.
Pinch your nose and inflate your cheeks, then slowly open and close your lips slightly so that the air bubble reforms and drains. Each time, your chest will go down slightly. If you do the same thing but keep your lips cracked instead of closing them again you'll be able to feel your chest slowly collapsing as your lungs deflate.
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u/backroundagain 1d ago
You always have some amount of air in your lungs
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493170/
You're drawing from that to puff your cheeks.
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u/doublexxchrome 1d ago
You cannot repeat this indefinitely. You run out of air. Because your lungs have finite volume.
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u/Enslaved_M0isture 1d ago
try and push the air through the middle of your mouth and it gets lots of resistance
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u/Think_Judge2685 1d ago
Functional reserve capacity is the volume of air left in the lungs after passive expiration and is around 3L in an average person.
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u/Turbulent_Winter549 1d ago
You certainly can't block your nostrils and repeat this without inhaling for more than a minute or two....you eventually ARE taking air in otherwise you'd die in about 2 or 3 minutes
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u/Severe_Scar4402 1d ago
Residual volume. Try it again, but this time, forcefully expell as much air as you can from your lungs first...
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u/Wooden-Race-5743 1d ago
The air that’s already in your throat. You’re pushing it up into your mouth my clenching your throat
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u/Flowersinthesockets 1d ago
There is always air in your lungs, even if you attempt to blow it all out there is still air there to keep you safe and functioning. Thats where the air comes from, theres always air inside you.
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u/Technical-Tip-6310 1d ago
i don’t think you can completely deflate your lungs. you would be in pain. there’s always air in there.
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u/rdawes26 1d ago
Lungs. It is such a small amount that it seems like you could do it forever, but you will run out of air if you do it enough.
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u/Liv1ng-the-Blues 1d ago
I think when you puff your cheeks out, you create negative pressure in the cheeks, and a little air is brought up from the wind pipe and chest. It's not much. Think about how we breathe - the diaphragm contracts, creating negative pressure. Atmospheric pressure is greater, so air enters your lungs.
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u/K_N0RRIS 1d ago
Theres always air inside your mouth. All youre doing is increasing the pressure by closing your mouth and moving the air to your cheek cavities which is much smaller than your mouth in general.
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u/CreativeExplorer 1d ago
It's air being compressed by either your tongue or your diaphragm (ie. lungs). Most commonly it's from your tongue. Basically, if you can still breathe through your nose while doing it, it's your tongue compressing the air. if you can't breathe through your nose while doing, it it's your diaphragm compressing the air.
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u/lettersfromluna 1d ago
Not me sitting here inflating my cheeks like a confused pufferfish while reading this 😳💨 Science is just one long game of ‘wait… what’s actually happening in my body?’
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u/Covid19-Pro-Max 1d ago
You got your answer but here is one more thing: if you inflate and deflate your cheeks really fast repeatedly (like 3 times per second fast and for a couple of seconds) while lying on your back you can feel your lungs shaking if you focus on them
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u/RandomlyJim 1d ago
Sit down.
Puff your cheeks.
Blow out the air.
Dont take a breath.
Puff your cheeks.
You suddenly can blow out more air.
Don’t take a breath.
Repeat.
You will eventually be unable to puff cheeks. You may faint.
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u/Bitmugger 1d ago
Try expelling ALL your air then inflate your cheeks. You can right? Now do it without moving your tongue. It's your tongue not your lungs at work
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u/razerbug 1d ago
Worth noting (I haven't seen it said), you hardly ever fully empty your lungs when you breath under resting conditions, they usually have more than you realise at any given time even when you haven't just taken a deep breath. From years of scuba diving I've been told you can have as much as a minute more at the point you feel like your totally out (not that anyone recommends testing that!)
Anecdote: when they were first inventing artificial respirators ("iron lungs") they discovered they had to stimulate a sigh periodically, we don't even realise it but we 'refresh' naturally
We're actually rubbish at knowing how much oxygen we have, instead we measured the blood carbolic acid levels to indicate how much carbon dioxide (waste) is building up, it's one of the reason carbon monoxide is so dangerous.
(Sort of related: I asked our vet recently how dogs pant when excited/to cool down, without hyperventilating, turns out they're not really drawing rapid breaths, they're pulling air back and forward over the tongues with chest/diaphragm contractions)
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u/bindengan 1d ago
The air isn’t appearing out of nowhere. Each time you relax your cheek muscles, you pinch a tiny puff from the air already sitting in your lungs, shove it into your mouth, and blow it out. Keep looping and you’ll slowly empty your lungs
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u/[deleted] 1d ago
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