Coughing effectively

When you're recovering from a cold, you'll suffer a cough. The body is coughing for a reason. There's a shitload of phlegm (nasty green stuff) backed up in your throat and you need to get it the heck out of your system. Coughing is your body's way of doing that. A good cough is a cough which expels phlegm from your throat into your mouth. Now, if you do what most people do, and swallow the phlegm back down, then duhh, you're gonna have that cough for weeks. Instead, try your hardest to spit out that phlegm when you have a "good" cough. Probe your mouth with your tongue to get it all out. Oh and... if you take medicine to suppress the coughing, I'll leave it to you to deduce how that will effect the body's phlegm-cleaning process.