Sinus Health Info

Sinus Irrigation

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Combating Sinus Infection Via Sinus Irrigation

Sinus irrigation or sinus wash augment the drainage of sinus mucous. It helps in combating and overcoming sinus infections. Sinus wash is one of the common recommendations by doctor in case of sinusitis.

When someone suffers from sinusitis, the person has to wash his nose many times a day. Advantages of washing the nasal tissues frequently are many. The most prominent ones are that it removes the nasal irritants, which may irritate the nasal tissues. It removes newly developed colonies of bacteria in nasal pathway. Also, it drains nasal pathway and makes breathing easier.

Nasal cleaning system involves the cilia. Cilia move in a waving motion to push contents in nose towards throat back, from there the content goes in stomach and then gets eradicated. In non-infected nose, cilia show healthy movements. Research highlights use of sinus irrigants promotes the efficient movement of cilia.

A variety of liquid chemicals in market are available to be used as sinus wash. They can be chosen as per their use and requirement. The solutions are.

Isotonic saline solution – This saline solution maintains the exact salt concentration optimum with body fluids.
Hypertonic saline solution – This has greater salt content and they are considered better in dropping swelling of the nasal tissues. Two schools of thoughts are there.
One stresses on the effectiveness of hypertonic solutions over isotonic one and another shows that hypertonic solution reduces the mucous drainage and cilia movement.
Many other salt solutions are also introduced after due research and these are not shown to have the drawbacks of hypertonic solutions. Hence they are chosen over hypertonic solution.

Neti pot is commonly used for irrigation purpose. It is a pot looking vessel with long neck. Saline solution is put into it and applied on nasal tissues. Solution goes in the nose from one nostril and comes out from another.