I’ve always seen people saying “if you have built up mucus in your lungs then drink this or that” but I never really understood that how can a liquid that goes down your throat help to clean/fix/heal your lungs?
and i’m not only referring to mucus that was just an example
In: Biology
Until you reach the epiglottis, lungs and stomach share the same windpipe. Your throat isn’t an open tube- more like a squished tube that contracts like a snake to move things through. When an object hits the epiglottis, it slides over the path to the bronchial tubes (your lungs) to allow food/water to pass to the stomach.
If your lungs hurt due to coughing or other irritation, a great deal of that pain is actually in your esophagus; we ‘feel’ it in our lungs because of a phenomenon called *referred pain*- essentially secondary pain caused by primary pain located proximal to the secondary site. That secondary pain is generally in your bronchial tubes, which we perceive as ‘in our lungs’.
Drinking cold water soothes the inflammation of the primary site of irritation, which eases the secondary site nerve response, hence water making your lungs feel better after a hard coughing spell.
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