Smoking and Excess Phlegm

Evan: Hi! I'm Evan from Virginia Beach. I want to know whether smoking create excess phlegm in mucus?

Dr. Susan Agrama: Smoking affects the lungs in numerous ways. The way that it causes excess phlegm in mucus is through two mechanisms. First, in everybody's lungs, we have tiny little hairs they're called Cilia, and they move back and forth. What Cilia do is they help clean debris out of your lungs. So, essentially they are kind of sweepers of your lungs. The cigarettes basically cause these to slow down and may even the kill the Cilia.

The second mechanism is that smoking actually causes an increase in the cells that produce mucus. So, firstly, you're producing more mucus and secondly, you're basically not allowing your lungs to able to clear the mucus because you're not letting the Cilia work. So, what happens is the mucus builds up in your small airways, you can't clear it out and you develop a chronic cough.


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