Measure your lungs, for own reference?

I don't know if this works, measuring how much you can breathe out (vital capacity I think) to know what is normal, but I suppose if you have a pneumothorax you should loose at least 0,5 liters of that capacity.

I must ask the doctors next time, unless anyone here beats me to it, or tries for real on a pneumothorax (not that you want to do that maybe, if you know you have one I mean...)

Anyway - I take a plastic bag that is a bit smaller, hold it together quite near the top with my fingers, at a level where I can just fill it with air from one full breath, so it's real full and hard.
Then I fill it with water while I hold it just the same (with support under of course), one liter at a time from a measuring cup, until the water reaches that level where my hands hold it together.

I have done this a few times to see how exact it is, and I get farily consistent results, maybe +/- 0,2 dl.
So if I feel worried about my lungs, I can always do this test and if I get my regular 5,2L, then I suppose I can feel pretty safe cause I can't really have a 1L+ air pocket outside my lung and still have the same vital capacity, can I?

New Member Joined: 19 Feb 2016 Posts: 6

Hi swede!

Wow, 5.2L, I had no idea our lungs could hold that much air. Your point is very interesting. For me, if I get any similar pain to the one I had with my first (and so far) only SP for 5 minutes or more, I would head to the hospital to get an x-ray.

But of course not always we have an hospital near, so if you get to any more accurate conclusion about this please let us know.

Kind regards,

A.

New Member Joined: 02 Jan 2018 Posts: 1

How do you know the capacity of the bag though, Swede? Pretty neat home test, but I'm not sure where to get bags that I know the volume value of.

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2018 12:59 pm Post subject:

As I described, I filled it with water to the same level, measuring it.

I had a spirometry lately and it measured almost exactly as my home measurement, so probably a decent method if you wanna check your volume for free at home.