Respiratory complaints run on a small, well-mapped cast. Cough that won't quit — the commonest referral — resolves into a famous top three (post-nasal drip, asthma, reflux) plus smoking and a blood-pressure drug class, once the serious minority is screened out. Breathlessness divides between heart, lungs and deconditioning, with anemia and anxiety as understudies. And behind both sits the organ's defining fact: lungs clean themselves continuously — an escalator of mucus and cilia sweeps inhaled debris upward around the clock, rebuilding within months of smoking cessation — which is why no tea, capsule or "cleanse" has anything to add to an apparatus already doing the job, and why the quit itself remains respiratory medicine's single most powerful prescription at any age.
The guides here work that map: the chronic-cough decision tree with its red flags, and the honest grading of a supplement category — "lung detox," mullein, NAC blends — built almost entirely on the escalator's existence being unknown to its customers. The recurring advice is the field's own: protect the machine (smoke, vapes, occupational dust), vaccinate the vulnerable seasons, treat the top three where they fit, and take the warning list — blood, weight loss, breathlessness at rest — to medicine, not to a funnel.