ELi5: Why does your body produce greenish phlem when you have a cold/flu?

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I’m sick right now and I’ve been coughing up a lot of large green chunks. Is my body creating it to fight off whatever’s happening, or is the cold causing the phlem? I’d love to know!

Google didn’t help me very much when I asked, it kind of just told me that I either had the flu, bronchitis, or cancer. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

that greenish gunk is whats left of your organisms “health police”, the white blood cells, after they have dealt with those microbes which cause the illness in first place. its a mixture of dead cells and sekret.

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