El Andalous - Neti Pot

Neti Pot

I thought I’d have a bit of a change of topic this week. It’s slowly getting to summer here; daytime temperatures range between 35-42 degrees, nighttime temperatures are around 27 degrees. It’s got to the stage now where I need the air conditioning on to cool my bedroom – either before I go to sleep or as I sleep. Sometimes, I wake up and I’m too cold with the air conditioning on, so my nights can be a bit restless as I turn the air conditioning on and off throughout the night.

Anyway, I’m not sure if it’s due to the air conditioning, but my nose has been feeling blocked. I have some nose spray I use to clear my passages, but recently I needed it three nights’ running and that’s the maximum dosage. Apparently, it can be addictive, and I can see why because my nose always feels so wonderfully open after I use it and I just want to return to that state. My prohibition to use the spray any longer inspired me to go back to using my neti pot.

If you don’t know what a neti pot is, it’s a small pot, almost like a teapot, that you use to irrigate your nose. You pour salt water from the pot into one nostril and the water comes out of the other nostril. In the process, the saline solution gives your nasal passages some moisture, removes allergens and bacteria, and clears any blockage.

When I first read about using a neti pot years ago, it looked pretty crazy. I couldn’t quite believe that the water would run out your other nostril like that, but I must have been desperate enough to give it a go. I can’t even remember if I was successful when I did it before, since my memories are of the water not coming out of the other nostril and then having visions of needing to have an operation to unblock my nose or some other horrible scenario. But I also remember laughing a lot as I tried and failed. At any rate, that ceramic neti pot survived and came to Egypt with me. I have a vague memory of thinking that if I ever needed one again, it might be hard to come by. 

Anyway, all these years later I returned to giving the neti pot another try. At first, I had the same problem I had before; I couldn’t get the water to run out the other side of my nose. After quite a bit of trial and error over a few nights, I’ve found that there’s a definite angle you need. There are loads of YouTube videos, but although people report it being easy, there’s a definite knack to it. I think it was the NIH website that even had someone demonstrating it and, like me, there was no water coming out the other nostril.

On the whole (in case this is useful for anyone else), my head needed to be more upright than I was expecting (looking at myself in the mirror helps; if I can look myself in the eye, I’m getting closer to the right position). I can now identify the sensation in my nose as to when the water is likely to come through my other nostril; it’s not immediate. Although you need your head tilted for the water to pour down, your head also needs to have a slight back tilt; maybe it’s different for each individual?

However, even when I’ve got the position right and the water is successfully running out my other nostril, half-way through, the water will suddenly decide to take a different course and start dribbling down my neck. It’s not a very elegant look! I wear a bib now when I’m doing it, otherwise my clothes get soaked. I don’t know why it suddenly decides to trickle down my neck as I don’t change anything I’m doing. One website says it may be because you have an inefficient neti pot, but I don’t like to blame my little pot.

It also took me a while to realize that I needed to do one potful for one nostril and another potful for the second nostril. Before that, I was using just half a pot for each. It’s taking me a while each evening, so I’m having to prepare to get to bed much earlier, but it is doing the job of making me able to breathe at night. I’m not sure now when I will feel able not to use it anymore; it won’t be practical to use the neti pot if I go on holiday, so at some point, I’ll have to live without it again. For now, I’m just grateful that it’s working.