I was sick....

Sorry it's been so long. I was sick. And busy. When I wasn't being run off my feet, I was asleep.
Wednesday I was so tired, I had to pull off the road and sleep in the car for an hour after a meeting up in Sandpoint Idaho! Some sort of cold/flu thing that is going around.

I got over it in about 3 days due to hippie cold/flu care (no sugar, no dairy (which is actually standard for me), sinus rinsing 3 times a day, vitamins, lots and lots of herbal tea). Others have been sick a week or more so I'm pretty cocky about the hippie cold care practices.
I was really only gross sick on Tuesday, Weds and Thursday. Not bad. Our office assistant was knocked out for a full 7 days. She probably ate candy. Or was sicker than me. Whatever.

The sinus rinsing is gross, but so effective.
I recommend the neti pot to everyone. Mine looks like this one:















You put some salt (sea salt...not the iodized table salt), like a 1/2 teaspoon or so, in there and add hot (boiled for sanitary reasons though when I'm in a hurry I just use warm water) water. Let it cool to body temperature. Then you pour it up one nostril and it comes out the other. About half way through the pot of water, you switch nostrils.
The stainless steel pots are better because the outside of the pot is the same temperature as the water (with ceramic ones you end up sticking your finger in the water to check the temp..and introducing germs off your finger), and it doesn't release toxins like the plastic ones. Also, you want one large enough to do both nostrils unless you want to spend twice as long waiting for water too cool in the pot.

When I'm being good, I do this every morning. Since I used to have a pretty much permanent sinus infection, avoiding dairy and rinsing my sinuses are worth it to me. I can actually breathe through my nose now. After nearly 4 decades of being a mouth breather, in my late 30s I finally found out that people can breathe through their noses. I remember asking my gramma when I was about 4 what noses were for (mine only seemed to get me in trouble for sniffing or having snot come out of it unexpectedly). She told me people breathe through them and I was pretty sure she was lying to me. I decided we had noses because people would look funny without them. Later, I decided that was not it because if no one had noses, we would not think that looked funny, we wouldn't know any different. ( I was an odd child ).

Anyway, that is why I'm willing to forego dairy and run water through my sinuses like a hippie. I can now breathe. I've almost got my boss convinced to try the neti. He has terrible allergies and noticed that I no longer seem to suffer from mine (I also use a homeopathic anti-allergy item during the main pollen season...more on that some other time).

Here is a bit of research on the neti for those who are doubters:
http://www.webmd.com/allergies/neti-pots?print=true

And just to answer the questions I get in real life:
No, it is NOT like when you get water up your nose swimming. Once you get the salt/water mix right and the temperature neutral, you can't even feel the water in there.

Yes, sometimes gross things come out. But if you keep the sinuses clean then no gross things come out or they are too small to see.

Wierd things I've noticed:
If you're tense, the water won't flow through even if your sinuses are clear.
You have to blow your nose gently several times when you're done to dry out the sinuses a bit (but not totally dry them out!)
Sometimes, it seems to also rinse my eustacion tube and I get ear crusties. BUT my inner ears itch much less than they used to.

Enough with the grossness. I will now drink some herbal tea and go to sleep.