Originally published at: Study claims Neti pot use reduces Covid 19 hospitalization rates among high-risk patients | Boing Boing
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Hey kids! Be sure to boil that water first!
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Or use distilled, if you don’t want to boil.
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Use distilled also if you hive high mineral content in your tap water and have sensitive nasal passages. Non-iodized salt is helpful for that too…
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The surgeon that did my open septorhinoplasty says that our local water supply doesn’t require boiling when using a neti pot or similar products. He used the example of people getting water up their noses when swimming in lakes and rivers with no ill effects as an indication of the low risk of infection in almost all cases of nasal water exposure.
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I’m neti pot’n right now. 
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And regardless, you’ll also want to warm it up to body temperature, unless you like having room temp water (or cold water) in your nasal passages…
(There’s a competeing product, Neli-rinse, that I’ve used a couple times; however it didn’t help out my allergies a whole lot.)
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I have a tendency to get sinus infections, so I’ve been using one for years. I can’t say I enjoy it really, but then when you’re stuffed up and suffering for weeks it does offer relief (some of which is purely mental: “take THAT you f$%king infection!”)
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Anecdotally, I know one ER doc would would swab and flush nasal passages during the height of the virus and recommended it to others. It made some sense, IMO, and unlike ivermectin etc, couldn’t hurt.
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Is this legit? The study’s paper looks pretty legit, but OTOH, I don’t read studies too often because, well, they’re hard to read. Eg: “As large unvaccinated populations pressure evolution of variants…”
Like @Mister44 said, at least this treatment couldn’t hurt. But also said…
Wonder if that actually helped.
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NeilMed also sells a sinus rinse squeeze bottle that is easier to use than a pot, and you don’t have to tilt your head at an odd angle. You can even mix your own solution when the packets run out.
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Wow, BB reporting is seriously looser than average today. The study suggests that nasal saline irrigation reduces likelihood of hospitalization or death.
Why the added branding? Is the BB store selling Neti Pots or something?
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I don’t think neti pot is a brand.
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There is some company that claims to be the original neti pot, but otherwise it’s a fairly generic term.
I’ve tried both styles and it def seemed more convenient with the squeezy type.
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Your mileage may vary. Given our tenuous and sometimes failing water supply infrastructure, I’ll take an ounce of prevention over a pound of single-celled organisms eating my brain until I’m insane and dead. My wife and I had lunch in Walkerton Ontario in May 2000. In this rare instance, we decided to spring for canned soda over the restaurants’ tap water. Probably saved our lives.
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The Covid-19 can’t get me if the amoebas take me first!
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Username checks out. 
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I hope it’s legit, but skimming through it one of the big challenges I see is one of potential sampling bias.
The people who were enrolled in this trial were not really a random sampling of the population, while the background CDC death rate they were comparing against was for people of all different status mixed together. From the paper:
So pre-existing conditions aside, even just sorting people by those willing and able to do nasal irrigation vs those that aren’t/can’t might lead to different patient populations. It’s really hard to control for all this stuff unless you’re doing a truly randomized trial with a placebo group.
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