The Biology of Winter Ailments

Having spent a lot of the last week coughing and sneezing I've become somewhat obsessed with snot.

When you have a cold what factors determine the amount of snot you produce? No really, some people seem to just have a little sniffle, others are practically hoiking up buckets of slime. Is it genetic? Because it's a protein secretion is it diet linked like lactation - do better fed people produce more snot? Is it linked to the nature of the virus infection itself - I know bacterial secondaries make it thicker and more green. And if you cough so hard you burst a blood vessel it's the blood that turns it brown.

But there is a huge variation in texture from foam to practically putty - that must be in some part due to a dilution factor?

There has to be PhD in this for someone. Sponsored by Kleenex perhaps - "The Absorbent Quality of Tissues in relation to the defined Classes of Snot Produced by The Common Cold"