mikeyNasal Rinsing- Your Best Allergy Season Defense

After 15 years of educating people on the benefits of nasal irrigation, I’ve found that most people remember to nasal rinse during cold and flu season but forget about it during allergy season. Including myself! Maybe that’s because colds are more dramatic with discolored mucous, a fever or the inability to smell and taste our foods. In other words, it’s obvious that we need to use our neti pot. With allergies, the symptoms aren’t always so dramatic. Often times we just tolerate the irritation of sneezing and sniffling until we are ‘forced’ to take an over-the-counter drug. Hmmm. Let me tell you why it’s important to prepare a good defense for allergy season and not just react to it.

Last week, I suffered my first sinus headache in years with the blooming of Spring. I had been super busy and hadn’t taken care of myself. When I reflect back on the weeks preceding this sinus headache, I remember I had some postnasal drip and was slightly congested at night, but I just ignored it. These were all signs that the inflammation was creeping in, and the more we got into pollen season the worse it got- until I finally woke up with a sinus headache.

Here’s a fact worth remembering: once sinus inflammation settles in, there’s no quick way to get it under control, unless you take an over-the-counter drug. I couldn’t simply nasal rinse and expect it to go away! Had I been rinsing regularly, I may not have gotten to that place. It took a whole day of bed rest and hypertonic rinses to finally calm down the inflammation and thus my sinus headache.

My words of advice: ALLERGY SUFFERERS PREPARE! Once you notice that pollen is in the air, NASAL RINSE. Some of you may do it twice a day, while others may rinse several times a week. Find what works best for you. Throw in a hypertonic rinse every once in a while to relieve any inflammation that may be occurring.

This is what nasal rinsing does:

1. Flushes out excess and dry mucous as well as particulate matter such as pollen.

2. Stimulates the cilia. Cilia are little hair-like structures in the sinuses that keep things moving along. Think of its movement like kelp at the bottom of the ocean. If the cilia can’t do its job, because there is too much mucous or not enough, it becomes a breeding ground for infection. As I mentioned in my blog a few weeks ago, 39% of sinus infections begin as sinus allergies or sinus headaches.

It’s not worth being miserable- as I found out. Just get into the habit of using your neti pot during allergy season and you will breathe a lot easier!

 

sinus rinse