Is cold water nasal washing useful for rhinitis?

The pressure of life in modern cities is getting greater and greater, the pace is getting faster and faster, and correspondingly, some complications are also increasing. I believe everyone is familiar with rhinitis. Nowadays, more and more people are suffering from rhinitis, and more and more people are affected by it in their work, life, and even health. So is there any way we can fight it? The cold water nasal washing method has always been mentioned by everyone, but is it really useful?

Most people know that if rhinitis is not cured, it is very likely to develop into nasal cancer. However, few people know that although rhinitis can be fatal, as long as you persist in washing your nose with cold water for a long time, even the most serious rhinitis can be cured. Why do we have to use cold water? To understand this problem, we must first know what rhinitis is.

1. Clinical manifestations

1. Symptoms

(1) Nasal congestion Nasal congestion is characterized by intermittent nature. Nasal congestion is relieved during the day, in hot weather, while working or exercising, but is aggravated at night, when sitting still or in cold weather. Another characteristic of nasal congestion is its alternation. When lying on your side, the lower nasal cavity is blocked, but the upper nasal cavity is well ventilated. Due to nasal congestion, there may be occasional symptoms such as decreased sense of smell, headache, dizziness, and nasal speech.

(2) Excessive discharge is often mucous or mucopurulent, and occasionally purulent. Purulence often occurs after secondary infection.

(3) Decreased sense of smell is mostly caused by two reasons: one is swelling of the nasal mucosa and nasal congestion, which prevents airflow from entering the olfactory area; the other is that the olfactory mucosa is stimulated by chronic inflammation for a long time, resulting in a decrease or disappearance of the olfactory function.

(4) Headache and dizziness Chronic sinusitis is often manifested by a feeling of heaviness in the head.

(5) Systemic symptoms: Most people also experience headaches, loss of appetite, fatigue, memory loss, and insomnia.

2. Types of rhinitis

There are many kinds of rhinitis symptoms, depending on the type of rhinitis, the symptoms of rhinitis are also different:

(1) Chronic rhinitis causes long-term intermittent or alternating nasal congestion, leading to dizziness and headache, which seriously affects sleep, work and study. Mucopurulent nasal discharge often flows back into the pharynx, causing cough and excessive sputum.

(2) Acute rhinitis ① Initial stage: 1 to 2 days. Patients often experience general discomfort, chills, fever, loss of appetite, headache, etc. Dryness and burning sensation in the nasal cavity and nasopharynx, itching in the nose, and frequent sneezing. ②The acute phase lasts 2 to 5 days. Existing symptoms worsen. The body temperature of adults is around 38 degrees, while that of children is as high as over 39 degrees. Vomiting, diarrhea, coma and even convulsions often occur due to high fever.

(3) Drug-induced rhinitis: Long-term use of various rhinitis drugs or lasers or surgeries that damage the nasal mucosa can lead to persistent nasal congestion and frequent nosebleeds.

(4) Atrophic rhinitis causes foul-smelling breath and nasal secretions in the form of lumps and tubular pus crusts that are difficult to blow out. When dry crusts are picked out with force, there is a small amount of nose bleeding. It is often mistaken for rhinitis in the early stages of a cold.

When the weather turns cold, some patients sneeze and have a runny nose continuously after getting up in the morning. When the temperature difference is large, their nose is blocked. They mistakenly think they have a cold and take some cold medicine casually, which makes their condition worse.

In fact, rhinitis is an inflammation of the nasal cavity. The question is, why do some people have nasal inflammation while others do not? In particular, even if a family lives in the same environment and has the same living habits, it is very likely that one person suffers from rhinitis while the others do not. This is not surprising at all, as everyone's body is different. People with good physical constitution have strong immunity and can resist the invasion of bacteria and viruses. However, some people have poor physical constitution and slightly weaker resistance, so they are easily infected by bacteria and viruses.

Since rhinitis is caused by poor physical constitution, we should strengthen the resistance of the nasal cavity from the root. Research has found that washing the nose with cold water can increase the nasal cavity's resistance to cold stimulation, while promoting blood circulation and shrinking the nasal concha and nasal sinus mucosa, thereby facilitating ventilation and drainage of the nasal sinuses and helping the recovery of rhinitis. Today, more than 100,000 patients with rhinitis have been cured using this method!

2. Wash your nose with cold water

The operation method of cold water nasal washing is not complicated, and patients can do it by themselves at home. The method is as follows: before washing your face every day, insert your nostrils into cold water, inhale gently to allow the cold water to fully contact the nasal mucosa, and then exhale the water. Repeat this process for 1 to 3 minutes (you can raise your head to breathe), and after washing your face, use your middle finger to rub both sides of the nose for about 20 times.

There is one thing that patients with rhinitis need to be reminded of in particular: it takes a long process to recover from rhinitis by washing the nose with cold water, and patients must persist in doing so every day. This means that no matter how cold or biting the weather is, the patient will no longer have the right to wash his face with warm water, and he cannot stop doing so.

Once you stop halfway, all your efforts will be wasted. Most modern people are busy with work and often have no time to wash their noses because of time constraints. In addition, some female patients, because they are worried that touching cold water during menstruation will cause gynecological inflammation, generally choose to stop washing their noses with cold water during menstruation and continue after the menstruation.

In fact, there is no point in doing this. The key to washing your nose with cold water is persistence. Why should you persist? Because the nasal immunity of rhinitis patients is very low, they need to rinse their nasal cavity with cold water for a long time to allow the nasal cavity to gradually adapt to this environment and ultimately achieve the goal of enhancing immunity.

The structure of the nasal cavity is very complex. In order to make all the internal tissues of the nasal cavity adapt, a little bit of penetration is needed. Generally speaking, bacteria are easy to breed in an environment with higher temperatures. Using cold water to wash the nose is to change the living environment of bacteria and make it impossible for bacteria to survive. If the patient stops halfway at this time, the bacteria will quickly revive and multiply in large numbers. Moreover, because cold water enhances the immunity of bacteria, it will be even more difficult to kill them again.

Washing the nose with cold water is the most effective, but it requires the patient to persist for a long time. Therefore, before using the cold water nasal wash method, patients with rhinitis must first check whether they have the perseverance to persist in the long term. If they are not mentally prepared to persist in the long term, it is best not to use this method. Otherwise, not only will it not eliminate rhinitis, but it will also make the bacteria stronger.