If you breathe in a bug, and it gets to your lungs, how can your lungs “get rid of” the bug carcass? Is it just trapped in there? Can lungs “digest” things? (Assuming you’re not coughing it back out)
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To add to the mechanical side – your lungs have resident immune cells whose job it is to ‘eat’ bacteria and destroy it. These are called macrophages. Think of them like pac-man – they wonder around the alveoli (air sacks) and gobble up the bugs they find, destroy them and then basically recycle the parts.
It’s way more complicated then this of course – as your lungs actually have their own microbiome. Meaning there are communities of bacteria that live in your lungs and do you no harm. In fact they might also help protect you from the bad bugs. We don’t know yet why some bacteria can live in there happily but others cause you to get infections etc. These bugs change according to different lung diseases – to the point where we can look at the bugs in your lungs and predict what lung condition you have (cystic fibrosis, COPD, asthma etc). Lots of unknowns but cool science to do to find out
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