This demo shows a healthy set of lungs and a set of lungs similar to someone who smoked a pack of cigarettes every day for 20 years. You can see that tar has formed a sticky black layer inside the lungs, which restricts oxygen flow and contributes to cancers forming. Choose to have healthy lungs, and say no to all forms of tobacco.

Learn the best way to quit smoking from our expert: https://www.mdanderson.org/publications/focused-on-health/what-s-the-best-way-to-quit-smoking-.h18-1592991.html

Request an appointment at MD Anderson by calling 1-877-632-6789 or online: https://my.mdanderson.org/requestappointment

Take a journey into the lungs to see how the respiratory system and automatic nervous system work together to keep us alive and breathing.

When you breathe, you transport oxygen to the body’s cells to keep them working, while also clearing your system of the carbon dioxide that this work generates. How do we accomplish this crucial and complex task without even thinking about it? Emma Bryce takes us into the lungs to investigate how they help keep us alive.

Lesson by Emma Bryce, animation by Andrew Zimbelman for The Foreign Correspondents’ Club.

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View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/what-do-the-lungs-do-emma-bryce