How to Cough Up Mucus

Chest congestion can be miserable 1. Untreated chest congestion can lead to infections like pneumonia and bronchitis 1. Thick mucus cannot be easily cleared by coughing. Home remedies can loosen and thin the mucus in your chest. The thinner the mucus, the more easily it will come up when you cough.

Warmth and Moisture

Install a vaporizer in your bedroom. High humidity will soothe bronchial passages and help loosen phlegm. Leave the vaporizer running if you'll be out of the room for less than an hour. Likewise, turn the vaporizer on an hour before you intend to be in the room. This keeps the humidity level high.

Take a long shower or bath and deeply inhale the steam from the hot water.

Drink lots of hot tea, taking time to breathe in the steam while it steeps. Some people report that mint or eucalyptus teas work especially well for this purpose. Eating hot soup is another good way to accomplish this goal.

Apply a heating pad to your upper chest. If you don’t have a commercially made heating pad, pour 2 cups of uncooked rice into a sock. Tie a knot in the open end and microwave the sock for about 4 minutes. Voila: instant heating pad.

Thin Out the Mucus

Gargle with salt water. Though this won’t clear out the lungs, this will clear out the mucus from the upper throat. It can also soothe a throat that has grown raw from coughing.

Eat spicy foods. The capsicum in hot foods is a natural expectorant. It will thin the mucus in your sinuses, throat and chest. This will allow you to cough up more mucus.

Inhale steam treatments of eucalyptus, mint or menthol. Boil water with a few drops of extract (or even a cough drop). Stand with your face over the pot and breathe the water vapor as it rises. For added effectiveness, drape a towel over your head and the pot while doing this.

Take an over-the-counter expectorant.