Phlegm

Phlegm (

Phlegm is more related to disease than mucus, and can be troublesome for the individual to excrete from the body. Phlegm is a thick secretion in the airway during disease and inflammation. Phlegm usually contains mucus with virus, bacteria, other debris, and sloughed-off inflammatory cells. Once phlegm has been expectorated by a cough, it becomes sputum.^[2]

Excessive phlegm creation

There are multiple factors that can contribute to an excess of phlegm in the throat or larynx.

• Vocal abuse: Vocal abuse is the misuse or overuse of the voice in an unhealthy fashion such as clearing the throat, yelling, screaming, talking loudly, or singing incorrectly.
  • Clearing the throat: Clearing the throat removes or loosens phlegm but the vocal cords hit together causing inflammation and therefore more phlegm.^[3]
  • Yelling/screaming: Yelling and screaming both cause the vocal cords to hit against each other causing inflammation and phlegm.^{[4][5][6][7][8]}
  • vocal fold nodules
    .
• Smoking: Smoke is hot, dry, polluted air which dries out the vocal cords. With each breath in of smoke, the larynx is polluted with toxins that inhibit it from rehydrating for about 3 hours.^[9] The vocal cords need a fair amount of lubrication and swell from inflammation when they do not have enough of it. When the vocal folds swell and are inflamed, phlegm is often created to attempt to ease the dryness.^[10][11]
  • Experiment on smoking correlations: In 2002, an experiment was done and published by the
    Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). At the end of the experiment, experimenters found that there was a high correlation between phlegm and cough with smoking of 0.49 (p < 0.001.)^{[citation needed}
    ]
• flu, cold, and pneumonia, phlegm becomes more excessive as an attempt to get rid of the bacteria or viral particles within the body. A major illness associated with excess phlegm is acute bronchitis. A major symptom of acute bronchitis is an excess amount of phlegm and is usually caused by a viral infection, and only bacterial infections, which are rare, are to be treated with an antibiotic.^[12]
• bronchioles become inflamed and create an excess amount of phlegm that can clog up air pathways.^[13]
• Air pollution: In studies of children, air pollutants have been found to increase phlegm by drying out and irritating parts of the throat.^{[citation needed]}

Removing phlegm

Excessive phlegm creation can be troublesome. There are basically two ways to get rid of excess phlegm: swallowing or spitting.

Phlegm naturally drains down into the back of the throat and can be

The alternative to swallowing would be throat-clearing. To do this, the mouth should be closed and air should be inhaled hard into the nose. Inhaling forcefully through the nose will pull excess phlegm and nasal mucus down into the throat, where muscles in the throat and tongue can prepare to eject it. Once this is done, a U-shape should be formed with the tongue, while simultaneously forcing air and saliva forward with the muscles at the back of the throat. At this point, the phlegm will be in the mouth and is now ready to be spat out as sputum.^[1]

Colors of phlegm

Phlegm can exist in different colors. The color could provide important clues about a person's health.^[1]

• Yellow or green: Indicates an infection often by a virus or bacteria. The color is caused by an enzyme produced by the white blood cells combating the infection.
• Clear: Indicates allergies. Mucus membranes produce histamines and make more phlegm.
• Red: Indicates dry air. A nasal spray can be used to alleviate symptoms of a dry nose and throat. It can also occur due to blood (such as if the person had or has a bleeding nose, or a lung malignancy).

Illnesses related to phlegm

Phlegm may be a carrier of

Apophlegmatisms, in pre-modern medicine, were medications chewed in order to draw away phlegm and humours.

History

Phlegm and humourism

The phlegm of Humourism is far from the same thing as phlegm as it is defined today. Nobel laureate Charles Richet MD, when describing humorism's "phlegm or pituitary secretion" in 1910 asked rhetorically, "this strange liquid, which is the cause of tumours, of chlorosis, of rheumatism, and cacochymia - where is it? Who will ever see it? Who has ever seen it? What can we say of this fanciful classification of humours into four groups, of which two are absolutely imaginary?"^[20]

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bodily fluids.