Probably a large misunderstanding of human anatomy but why does it seem that coughing is really inefficient at removing whatever the body is trying to expel from the lungs. As a comparison, vomiting, diarrhea, sneezing are all very forceful without really any effort on the part of us. However, coughs seem to barely expel anything without help from medication and continue WELL after the actual infection is resolved unlike those other body expulsion techniques mentioned above. I type this with a non-productive cough two weeks after a cold.
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Coughing can expel large amounts of phlegm from the body, which couldn’t be done otherwise. In that sense, I wouldn’t consider it inefficient.
There are two main factors that go into this:
1) Coughing is an attempt to expel solid matter with a system that has the primary purpose of moving gas.
In vomiting and diarhea you’re moving a mix of solids and liquids with a system that has the primary purpose of moving a mix of solids and liquids.
With sneezing you’re moving gas and particulates suspended in that gas, with a system that has the primary purpose of moving gas.
A system for moving gas has some obvious difficulties when moving solids – fortunately there are some backups specifically for that purpose, but they’re not as strong as something constantly in use for that purpose.
2) It’s less obvious when you succeed, because coughing isn’t about getting things out of your body.
Vomiting, Diarhea and Sneezing all aim to remove something from your body entirely. Coughing just wants to get it up to the point where your air tube and your food tube meet, so that it can be swallowed down your food tube.
So sometimes you will successfully cough something up and not realise you’ve done so, because it doesn’t reach your mouth.
The problem with coughing is that you breathe in and out through the same hole. So when you want to cough something out you first have to breathe in which tends to pull whatever you’re trying to cough out back.
Cough can be a very effective method to remove mucus or possibly a small foreign body from the airway. Anyone who has had bronchitis and coughs up what seems like a cup of mucus a day can attest to this. There is also a method to producing a more effective cough which involves taking a very deep breath and then doing a force blow out. This also does less damage to your vocal cords.
https://www.clevelandclinicabudhabi.ae/en/health-hub/health-resource/treatments-and-procedures/controlled-coughing
But you are talking about a non-productive cough which basically implies your airways are damaged, irritated and hypersensitive, and you are coughing due to the cough reflex. In a non-productive cough, your airways don’t know there is nothing cough up. Like many systems in our body, they only know how to react in a certain way and the airway react to injury by coughing. Sometimes there is an issue with the nerves becoming hypersensitive after injury (particularly after viral infection) and this causes you to cough at inappropriate stimuli – like just breathing in cold air will make you cough. Cough suppressant can help with this but personally I’ve found them to be largely unhelpful.
For a non-productive, ticklish cough, slowly dissolving a spoonful of honey in your mouth will generally quell the urge to cough. Bonus points if it’s Manuka honey known for its antibacterial properties, or local, raw honey, (which is also helpful if you suffer from seasonal allergies as it contains tiny amounts of local pollens which can desensitize you over time).
As for wet sounding productive coughs, doing gentle huff breaths (as if you’re fogging up a window) followed by coughing will help bring up more mucous. Huffs consolidate the mucous from the smaller airways into the larger ones, and then coughing moves it up and out.
If you have a lot of mucous, doing lung physio such as Active Cycle of Breathing or the more challenging, Autogenic Drainage physio can help loosen and consolidate the mucous even more. Doing it for about 3 minutes followed by 3 huffs and several coughs and repeated 5 to 10 times can be very effective. There are also airway clearance devices that you can use too.
Say you are sick and coughing up phlegm. The body produces phlegm continuously during illness, so even if you cough it all up, you will soon have more to cough up later.
Your body also coughs due to irritation, which is correlated with having stuff to cough up but not a guarantee. Your lungs remain irritated after the infection, so you cough until they are fully healed, even though the infection has ended.
Grab a plastic grocery bag. Put a pinch of dirt in it.
Now try and get that dirt out of the bag without turning it inside out or upside down.
Without getting into specifics…. Coughing is extremely efficient for what it’s meant to accomplish.
It’s because we evolved to stand upright. Imagine the shape of a dog’s neck standing normally. Then, bend the dog’s neck 90 degrees downwards so the rest of the dog’s body stays the same but the head is now staring straight at the floor. Imagine the chokepoint this creates in the throat. That’s what has happened to human throats. A normally straight pathway is now weirdly bent and jammed. This is why animals can seem to devour food bigger than their head while we must eat in tiny chewed bites. Animals don’t get stuffy noses the way we do. Animals don’t get chunks of flehm that can’t figure out whether to go out or stay in. Animals don’t choke on small objects the way we do. It’s all from how our neck was bent after evolving to stand upright.
EDIT – looks like it was the ability to speak not stand.
https://medium.com/100-podcasts/words-kill-e99e7cbc11df#:~:text=But%20it%20also%20means%20that,can’t%20talk%20like%20us.
Next time you want to cough try bowing/bending over. Less gravity to fight against=less work and more coughing productivity.
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