Better Living Through Thinking

Neti Pot for sinus rinses ("jalaneti")

Tue, 19 Dec 2006

I bought a neti pot in November from Health & Yoga:

(Link opens new window. Select "Neti Pot" in the products list on the left and click "Go").

I've used it almost every day and couldn't be more pleased.

We run our furnace on the high side, making the air extremely dry, which dries out the mucus membranes in our sinuses (not to mention the swelling), making nighttime breathing difficult and then all of the hard mucus in the morning that lasts until mid-day.

We've mitigated this dryness somewhat with a great humidifier (going on 4 years I think). I'll write about that later sometime.

But the one thing that's made the biggest difference for us this winter (we'd had a few sinus infections between the 6 of us already this year) is doing sinus rinses with our new neti pot.

Since we've had the neti pot, nobody's had any sinus infections (crossing-fingers). When my 8-year-old daughter is feeling the beginning of one, she asks to do a sinus rinse ("jalaneti" is the Indian word for this I'm told) before bedtime. It's amazing how much thick mucus comes out of those little sinuses! We'll do this for a week or so and the infection never progresses and eventually goes away.

She feels much better after each rinse, and it only takes a few minutes.

The neti pot at Health & Yoga is a stainless steel model and is barely more than the cheap plastic pots or clay pots, except that it doesn't break and holds almost 2 cups of saline solution

If anyone wants to get me a nice gift, I could use another one of these, since the one I bought has been largely monopolized by my daughters.