Neti Pot

Learning to love the neti pot 
(or How I became a pothead)

by Liz C,   Anyway, I Was Just Thinking

I'd heard about neti pots for years and they always kind of freaked me out. I know that in parts of the world they are part of the daily hygiene routine, as normal as brushing teeth, but I grew up in the land of chlorinated public pools and I've always hated getting water up my nose. Even just thinking about putting water up there on purpose gave me a headache.

My boyfriend had a really bad allergy season this spring and his doctor's nurse recommended a neti pot. He bought it and it sat around for a couple of weeks. I'd peek at it in the cabinet and ponder exactly how in the heck this could possibly be a good thing.

After a particularly miserable week, even with Claritin and Flonase, he watched the instructional DVD (it must be really complicated, to warrant an instructional DVD, right?) and gave it a go.

He not only pronounced it do-able, but not sucky at all. And it relieved the congestion in his head and resulting post-nasal drip better than any of the medicines.

Well, OK then. Good for him.

Right around that time, I had a parent-teacher conference for my 8 yo son. I was shocked to hear her reports of oddball disruptive behaviors, inattention, and other things that seemed totally out of character and out of the blue. Like any mom of a boy, I wondered if these were signs of some sort of scary behavioral problems.

After several stunned minutes while I frantically searched for explanations, it occurred to me that my son also had been having a miserable allergy season. I had been giving him Claritin on top of his usual Flonase. Claritin is supposed to be OK for kids, right? It's sold over-the counter in children's doses and everything. But I just had this sense that it might be worth stopping. Heck, it was the only thing I could stop.

And stop it I did, the very next day. Guess what? By the end of the week, there was a marked shift in his behavior, back to where he had always been. That was a huge relief.

But what to do with the allergies? It occurred to me that I had been giving him Flonase, a nasal steroid, for probably four years. I felt I really had to stop that too. How could that be good for a kid? I'm not a crunchy-granola person; I >heart< science and I'm a huge fan of 'Better living through chemistry' but was time to think outside the box.

Enter the neti pot.

I had my boyfriend demonstrate it for me to make sure he wasn't writhing in agony and not telling me, then I tried it. Yeah, it stung for a minute, but it cleared out a whole bunch of crud. (I too had been having a less-than-stellar allergy season.) I decided to give it a go with my son.

I had visions of having to hold him in a headlock and force the thing up his nose, but it turned out to be no big deal. My boyfriend did his demo thing while I remarked how cool it was that the water went in one nostril and out the other! And you can even talk! Wow! (Yeah, I sold it hard.)

I mixed up a fresh batch of saline, stuck it in my son's nose, showed him how to turn his head, and that's all there was to it. Honest!

That was in April, I think. We all still do it daily, and I think it's the best thing ever. And I'm a huge chicken! But you probably figured that out already.

My son still has occasional allergy issues, and early on I would give him an occasional Benadryl at bedtime, but never have the symptoms been bad enough for me to consider giving him the daily meds again. I was able to completely stop my Flonase and I think my boyfriend did too.

Couple of notes: I bought the SinuCleanse brand. It comes with little saline packets, and you can get refills, but if you use 1 packet per potful of water per nostril every day the cost adds up. I recently bought a box of picking salt, which is plain, uniodized (very important!) fine-grain salt. Copying the proportions from the back of a packet, I mixed three parts salt to one part baking soda in a container and we use about 1/2 tsp per potful.

Also, the first few times I used it, it did sting a little, but nothing like getting pool water up the schnozz.

I found that plain salt without the baking soda can sting a little, as can using too much salt, not enough salt, or water that is too hot or too cold. They say shoot for body temp water, where you can't really tell what temp it is when you stick your finger in it. I usually go just a hair warmer because my hands are always cold. YMMV.

You can watch the instructional videos on their website and even on YouTube (honest!)

There are other brands/designs out there but I haven't tried them. SinuCleanse also makes a squeeze bottle version but I really was not thrilled with the idea of forcing the water in under pressure. It may be fine, but I like the gravity-feed concept better.

So there you go. Yes, it's weird and foreign, but it works!