If you have been suffering from (COPD) chronic obstructive pulmonary disease & bronchiectasis, removing mucus from your lungs is a crucial part of controlling your lung disorder. Overdue phlegm or mucus build-up can obstruct airways and make it hard for you to breathe. Besides, excessive mucus can result in infections like Pneumonia.
Now, a question may arise in your mind: what’s the way to clear mucus out of the lungs? Well, there are several treatment options that you can execute to get rid of the problem. Controlled coughing, chest physiotherapy, and medication are prominent treatments for clearing mucus.
However, here we have conferred some of the techniques that have been given by a number of specialists to decrease lung mucus and accelerate your regular breathing habits.
Symptoms of Mucus Build-Up In Lungs
How do you know whether your lungs are blocked with mucus or not? There are some common signs that you’ll notice if mucus builds up in your lungs. All the symptoms we have provided here have been retrieved from Medical News Today.
- Difficulty in Sleeping
- Chest Congestion
- Sore Throat
- Wheezing
- Respiratory Infection
- Cough that Produces Phlegm
- Shallow Breathing
- Rapid Breathing
What Causes Mucus In The Lungs
Mucus pumps up in the lungs are the result of some medical disorders. Here is the list of reasons for mucus.
- Respiratory Condition [Asthma, COPD, Chronic Bronchitis, Cystic Fibrosis, etc.]
- Spinal Muscular Atrophy
- Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
- Allergies
- Smoking
- Chronic Illness
- Surgery
- Frail Abdominal Muscles
- Dehydration
- Weak Diaphragm
How to Clear Mucus Out of Lungs
If you are suffering from lung diseases, you can exercise at home that aids in preventing & decreasing mucus accumulation in your lungs. Here, different techniques have been demonstrated that will help you clear mucus out of the lungs.
Coughing Controlled
Controlled coughing is a kind of therapeutic method involving the chest & stomach muscles to extract blocked mucus from the lungs. The two most common controlled coughing methods are
- Deep Coughing
- Huff Coughing
1. Deep Coughing
For deep coughing exercises, you can follow the steps below. You’ll surely get benefitted.
- Take a chair & sit comfortably with flat feet on the floor
- Your stomach must be wrapped up by your arms, and take a breath deeply
- Purse your lips, cough forcefully at the time of pressuring your arms strongly against your stomach muscles.
2. Huff Coughing
It is another cough-controlled technique that you can follow to get relief from the mucus.
- Breath wholly and slowly expand your lungs
- Pressuring the muscles of your stomach, breathe out rapidly, and create an “HA” sound with every single breath
- Repeat the process couple of times
- Now to clear your lungs to cough deeply
Intense (Deep) Breathing
Deep breathing exercises can be helpful if you have mucus blocked in the lungs. With deep breathing exercises, you can prevent growing mucus & can clear your lungs. This exercise involves slowly inhaling & exhaling ( Breathing in & Breathing out) to help your lungs extend.
Deep breath is connected to pulmonary hygiene, where physical manipulation is used to assist you in turning over blocked mucus and make the lungs clear. You can learn deep breathing techniques from therapists first, and then you can practice it on your own at home.
Several Medications
Several OTC (Over The Counter) Medications can help extract extreme mucus from your lungs. You can take Robitussin & Mucinex as both of them hold expectorants that slacken the mucus off so that it can easily be forked out.
They can also prevent the growth of mucins, which is the essential protein found in mucus. You’ll find a couple of medications that contain expectorants & other ingredients. But, all of them you can’t purchase without a doctor’s prescription.
Prescription Medicine
Medicines such as Mucolytics, Carbocysteine, and N-Acetylcysteine are available that can be used to clear the mucus out of lungs. These pharmaceuticals work differently than expectorants. They diminish the kinds of chemical bonds in mucus and make it loosen to remove.
Chest Remedial-Exercise
Chest exercise or Physiotherapy indicates techniques that can be performed manually or with different mechanical devices. The chest physiotherapy can be done in 20 minutes to an hour every day. You can do it on your own or can take help from your partners.
1. Manual Therapy
Manual physiotherapy includes chest thump and vibration to ease up the mucus and squeeze a cough. While doing manual therapy, you can involve your therapist or loved ones thumping on your chest or back to assist in making the thick mucus slack in your lungs, so you’ll be up to remove it. Vibration can be accomplished by keeping a flat hand on the chest wall and creating a shaking motion.
2. Therapy With Mechanical Device
You can use a Mucus Clearance Device like AirPhysio that uses a natural process of Oscillating Positive Expiratory Pressure to remove lung mucus. Besides, AirPhysio helps maintain the lungs’ maximum hygiene and restore the lungs’ capacity by clearing blocked mucus in the lungs’ airways.
Prevention of Mucus In The Lungs
We have come up with some tips that can be followed to prevent mucus from growing up.
- Stay away from allergens & irritants such as pet dander, chemicals, & dust.
- Try to wear musk & improve ventilation in the area.
- If you smoke regularly, then quit it right now and avoid secondhand smoke.
- Sanitize your hands often if possible to protect against viruses.
- Eat healthy foods and improve immune systems.
- Do exercise regularly for at least 20 minutes or above.
- Find out respiratory disorders first and then take medicine according to prescription.
- You can take supplements like Vitamin C, Zinc, and Probiotics.
Conclusion
We have demonstrated several ways in the above that can help remove mucus in your lungs. But, if you notice that you are still facing problems even after applying the techniques as we mentioned, it is better to appoint a doctor. Apart from that, we’ll also recommend consulting a doctor if you see extreme mucus in the chest for more than 3 days, suddenly congestion gets worse, or the color of the mucus is about to be green or yellow.