do healthy people have sticky sputum too if they nebulize?

The problem with your question, it's hypothetical. Why would a healthy person be nebulizing? I am not a "healthy" person, when I started nebulizing my sputum was so thick, I would have to stop several times to huff, to clear my airway before I could continue. It was gross! After several months I wouldn't get any sputum while nebulizing, but when I finished, I was constantly clearing my throat of sputum. due to the irritation from the 7% saline. I'm now under the care of a different doctor for the treatment of MAC. The lab that tested my sputum would comment the sample was excellent to culture.
Great after dinner conversation.

Did you stop nebulizing 7%. Me too, 7% irritates me very much and over cough from it. 3% seems okay.

She may mean do people who don't have bronchiectasis have sticky stuff after nebbing? I would guess that people with "just" asthma and copd would have the same sticky stuff as we do

I was just wondering the same thing! I never coughed up phlegm unless I had a chest cold. So when I was diagnosed with Bronchiectisis with no symptoms and told to do AC, I was amazed at the sputum I could bring up. Like was it there all along?

Just yesterday, I was wondering if others could bring it up even if they don’t have Bronchiectisis.

I have been diagnosed with bronchiectasis and NTM PD and have no sputum. I nebulize saline to no avail

I guess with each individual the scenario of the sputum is different. I was just curious ...like if a dr did a bronchoscopy on a healthy patient..would he see thick sputum in there? There's a lot I don't understand about Mac/Bx.....and although I ask questions here and to my dr, there is still a mystery to a lot of it...including the antibiotics.........I wish I had never gotten this...I wish none of us ever got it....dam it all.

I think a healthy lung would not produce much mucus if they were to nebulize? Just a guess. Normal lungs naturally produce mucus but where does it go?

Found this: Then little hairs called cilia go to work. They push the mucus up and out of the lungs with all the trapped bacteria, viruses, and dust. “It comes up at sort of a nice slow rate to the back of the throat, and if you're normal and healthy, you never feel it and you just swallow it.”

My pulmo said Bronchiectasis airways produce more mucus and are not able to clear it normally so we use other means to facilitate it (saline nebulizing, aerobika, airway clearance techniques etc). But those other means will never be as effective.

In one of the many excellent presentations in this and other sites, a doctor said that those with normal lungs have mucus. People with bronchiectasis produce sputum, which the immune system produces to attack and surround the foreign stuff that our lungs can’t expel. That was a revelation to me. It’s why we can have thicker, multicolored sputum. Wish I could remember which presentation. Alas…

THanks for your response! Do you notice that on some days you do not cough at all, then in colder weather u cough up clear sputum occasionally between nebulizing
treatments?

I hear you Bon!