system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: If a piece of food goes down your windpipe (E.g. A grain of rice) and coughing didn't manage to remove it, would it end up rotting in your lungs? How does the body expel offending food particles that didn't get coughed out?
gpt
Have you ever had bronchitis? You start wheezing and coughing up phlegm. Heavy smokers often wheeze and cough up tobacco tar and phlegm. Inhaling an antibody would irritate lungs, inflammation would cause phlegm to accumulate so that immune system can disolve the particle/tiny object and if not, you get that heaving inducing cough that seems to not cough up anything until it does. You wouldn't cough up the entire thing, every cough gets rid of some particles of the food piece.