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Q: What’s a Neti-Pot?

A:  A Neti-Pot is an ancient Indian method of nasal and sinus cleansing, where one uses a small tea-pot shaped container to pour salt water into the nose. The saline solution is not very different from other forms of nasal saline recipes that are widely available. There are many different ways of getting salt water into your nose, including bottles that spray, mist or pump saline. Some come in aerosol cans. Another, more aggressive way of irrigating your nose is to use a Water-pik machine which sprays the saline under high pressure. You’ll need to get an inexpensive nasal adaptor if you want to use this device.

The Neti-Pot is similar to all the other methods mentioned above, but is unique in that it uses gravity to pour large volumes of saline into one side of your nose. It’s applied by bending your head over a sink and tilting your nose to one side. The nozzle of the Neti-Pot is placed on the higher nostril and slowly emptied into the nose. The saline goes to the back of the nose, turns around the back of the septum, and comes out the lower, gravity-dependent side. The head is turned to the other direction and the other side is then addressed. There are video demonstrations of this technique on YouTube.