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Comment by AlbertCory | Hacker News Reader

Public service announcement: sinus rinse (e.g. NeilMed) works. Available in every drug store with no prescription or pharmacist involvement necessary.

It's gross, though. Do it in private.

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Since I have seen a number of recommendations for sinus rinse in this thread but haven't (yet) noticed this specifically mentioned: It is important to use sterile water if you are using water for the rinse. Water directly from the tap apparently may not be safe for that purpose (there was a case earlier this year where a person died from a brain eating bacteria - they were apparently infected from using unboiled tap water for a sinus rinse.)

https://www.healthywa.wa.gov.au/Articles/N_R/Nasal-irrigatio... https://www.everydayhealth.com/lung-respiratory/too-many-peo...

it's been discussed before here.

Brain Eating Ameoba! https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53302773 Yes, it was in Florida.

I have swollen nasal polyps (or something) which causes every single cold I get to eventually transform into a 2 week sinus infection + cough ordeal.

Netty pot with salty water and a pinch of baking soda, and an even saltier water gargle clears things up nicely. And is very budget friendly.

It was when I had the mother of all sinus infections that someone told me about this. Never had the problem again. YMMV.

People imagine it must burn, because getting water up your nose when swimming burns. But the salt & baking soda neutralizes that.

Ask your ENT to look into adding Budesonide [0] to your saline rinse. It is intended to keep polyps from growing (and has worked wonders for me).

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7374675/

It's been superseded by Mometasone. It's more lipophilic.

It doesn't reduce the sinus inflammation. At least for me all I end up with is a still congested, but now watery nose.

Noted. At least you've tried it.

The water dripping out of your nose: that's a feature, not a bug /s

It's useful to rinse out the sinuses so that nasties don't grow there.

If you already are pretty bad off, yeah it usually doesn’t help. It really helps prevent it from getting that bad though, by washing out pollen, gunk, etc. and hydrating things.

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