Don’t Judge Mucus By Its Color
I know I’ve touched on this a few times, but this myth is going to take a LONG time to die out, so I think it’s worth reviewing.
Somewhere along the road of medical advancement, someone made the suggestion that if mucus is thick and green, then that is a sure sign of a bacterial infection.
On the surface it seems to make sense. At least it’s believable. Right?
It’s pithy.
It’s simple.
We like simple.
So it stuck… and permeated our entire culture… like the virus that caused it in the first place (…ah, but I get ahead of myself).
There’s no doubt that medicine is extremely nuanced and hardly ever cookie-cutter, so we are always looking for ways to simplify the diagnostic and treatment decisions.
And sometimes we can do that.
A positive flu or strep test does make the diagnosis and treatment straight-forward.
But unfortunately, the color or quality of mucus should never have been moved into the “prescribe by color” category.
And it’s really too bad. My job would be much easier.
But the truth is that mucus is a normal and natural part of our respiratory and immune systems. It responds to allergens, viruses, and bacteria by trapping and neutralizing the invaders before they get inside our bodies. And there are many factors can affect its quality or consistency – apart from the pathogen. (Remember my post on waiting 2 hours before calling the doc?)
In fact, just do a quick Google search: “Green mucus, antibiotics.”
Every webpage headline that pops up is trying to defeat this myth, yet still it persists (even among doctors!).
For example, the author of this article from the Harvard Health Blog expresses the same concerns with over-prescribing antibiotics based on mucus color.
I realize that this is a tough one. Every day patients will vehemently challenge me on it.
In fact, patients will often upload pictures of their snot for me to see just to prove that they need antibiotics.
I try to explain that the quality of the mucus is a piece of the puzzle, but not as helpful as we had once thought.
At least it’s not quite as simple as prescribe by color.
Hopefully one day this won’t be such a sticky issue. ;-P
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