[ELI5] When you accidentally inhale something, like water or food, and you cough it mostly up and are fine, how does the rest get out of your lungs and how do you not get pneumonia?

Question

[ELI5] When you accidentally inhale something, like water or food, and you cough it mostly up and are fine, how does the rest get out of your lungs and how do you not get pneumonia?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Your airways are all covered with little “finger-like projections” called cilia. Their entire job is to grab onto junk that doesn’t belong and scoot it back up and out until you can cough it out. Things that don’t get pushed out like this get absorbed, ie, water, or attacked and eaten up by the many immune cells that live in your lungs.

For pneumonia to occur, you usually need a much larger amount of food or fluid to get deeper in the lungs than most people will achieve with regular choking. More likely, people who get pneumonia already have a respiratory infection interfering with a normal immune response, which allows bacteria to set up shop and go wild 🎉🎉

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