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Mucus is not widely considered a topic for polite conversation. It’s something to be discreetly blown into a tissue, folded up, and thrown away.

But the simple truth is that without mucus, you wouldn’t be alive.

“Mucus is essential for the protection of your body,” says Jeffrey Spiegel, an ear, nose, and throat surgeon at Boston University. “It’s a protective barrier, and it allows you to breathe comfortably. If you had no mucus, you’d be quite sorry you didn’t.”

Given how important mucus is — and how often colds and allergies cause mucus-related symptoms — it’s worth learning a bit more about it.

1) You produce about 1.5 quarts of mucus a day — and swallow the vast majority

Most of us think of mucus as something that leaks from our nose, but the truth is that it also gets secreted in your trachea and other tubes that carry air through your lungs, where it’s technically called phlegm. Wherever it’s produced, mucus is a mix of water and proteins, and most of it gets pushed to the back of your throat by microscopic hairs called cilia.

Whether you’re aware of it or not, you’re constantly swallowing all this mucus, and it harmlessly ends up in your stomach. “You’re swallowing, on average, twice a minute — even when you’re sleeping at night,” says Michael Ellis, an ear, nose, and throat doctor at Tulane University.

Ellis says that, on average, a person produces about 1.5 quarts of mucus per day, and contrary to what you might think, it doesn’t vary by all that much. But that mucus gets diluted by a separate, watery secretion (called serous fluid), which can vary widely based on your health.

2) Mucus is basically the body’s flypaper

Mucus has two main functions: it keeps the nasal cavity and the other airways inside your body moist, preventing them from drying out due to all the air that flows over them. (Relatedly, the serous fluid that mucus is mixed with also moistens the air itself before it enters the lungs.)

Mucus’ other function, though, might surprise you. “Mucus is kind of like flypaper,” Ellis says. “Debris that comes into the nose or throat sticks to it, and then you swallow it, so it doesn’t get into your lungs.”

Mucus, in other words, is nature’s filter for your delicate lungs. The bacteria, dust, and other tiny particles that you breathe in get stuck in mucus and pulled down into your stomach, where they’re destroyed by enzymes.

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