It is important to note that your sinuses may be so congested and/or the nasal passage ways so inflamed that for the spray to reach the deeper recesses of the sinus areas may take up to a week of continual spraying. This can be more demanding than the patient is willing to tolerate. In this case, there is another mechanism of delivery that offers an effective and time honored symbiosis with the every-30-minutes spray regimen.
For centuries, the peoples of Eastern countries have used neti-pots to cleanse and flush their sinuses. They used this method before they practiced yoga. In modern times, this tradition has passed beyond their borders and has been practiced and well received in large parts of the Western world. In fact, it has become a rather common means of clearing excess mucus from sinuses during and after colds and sinus infections.
Traditionally, the neti-pot has been filled with a warm saline solution. This is a combination of salts and water in a percentage of roughly 0.9% salinity. Various types and sources of salts are used with and without scents. The 0.9% salinity is also modified slightly, but is based on the fact that this is the physiologically comfortable level as it is closely matched to the salinity of the interstitial space in your body. In the medical world, it is referred to as “Normal” saline solution indicating that it is normalized to physiological saline levels.
Neti-pots are filled with this warm solution and then the tip of the pot is inserted carefully and gently into a nostril. The patient then tips his/her head to the side and literally pours the fluid into the nostril, through the sinuses, and out the other nostril. The fluid can be trapped for a period of time or simply allowed to run freely.
One should note that bacteria and fungus live freely and comfortably in your body and so bathing them with warm water of the correct pH and salinity is not at all harmful to these invading pathogens. In fact, it is more useful to visualize the act of neti cleansing with saline solution as a technique to flush and soothe irritated sinuses, rather than providing any sort of eradication of the invading pathogens.
However, if we replace the saline solution with an antimicrobial that is powerful enough to reduce a population of bacteria by 6 orders of magnitude (1,000,000 to 1) in just 20 minutes, we can effectively both cleanse and treat the sinus regions as well as kill the population of microbes in the deepest recesses of the sinuses.
This is exactly what is achieved when using the enhanced silver colloid in the neti-pot. For sinus infections that are recurrent, persistent or simply non-responsive to simpler techniques, the process of neti cleansing with an enhanced aqueous silver colloid solution is a proven and tested method for attenuating (reducing) the microbial load in the sinuses.
When using a neti-pot, once a continuous flow has been achieved in one nostril and out the other, the nose can be pinched off and the fluid retained in the sinuses for a period of time.
It is important to make sure that you keep your soft-palate elevated and firmly in place on the roof of your mouth in order to block the flow of fluid down your throat. The fluid can be trapped for 5 to 10 minutes. The killing of bacteria and fungus increases with time.
By using this “trapping” method, one can still breathe through their mouth during the holding process. Typically, after a few flush-and-hold cycles with the enhanced aqueous silver colloid, the sinus membranes will be sufficiently coated with the colloid and the exposure and killing will persist until the user blows his/her nose or the mucus drainage carries away the liquid.
This flush can maintain killing for 20 or more minutes. If one flushes and holds the fluid in the sinuses for just 10 minutes, the number of bacteria and fungus killed will be in the millions. It is a tremendously powerful and highly effective companion therapy to the regular spraying protocol described earlier.
To better understand this treatment procedure, it makes sense to take a look at some laboratory numbers for a moment. In the below graph, excerpted from a test of aqueous silver colloids on E. coli as an indicator microbe, we can clearly see the value of using a high concentration of pure, aqueous silver colloid. The height of the vertical bars indicates the number of bacteria that survived the exposure to this antimicrobial fluid.
By the time the concentration in the test reached the 25 to 50 ppm (parts per million) range, there were very few survivors. The test inoculum (number of bacteria that began the test) was roughly 1 million bacteria.
The graph mentioned will be added shortly.
In the case where the concentration of the colloid was only 6.5 ppm, the survivors after 40 minutes numbered roughly 20,400. This is a reduction of less than 100:1.
Yet, in the same amount of time, a strong colloid (such as could be found in a product like Nature’s Rite Super Neti JuiceTM) reduced this population from 1 million to 27 survivors. By continuing the treatment for just 20 minutes, survivors were reduced to a factor greater than 1 million to 1.
This performance illustrates the devastating effect that filling the sinuses with a powerful antimicrobial can have on a reticent population of bacteria. It also demonstrates quite clearly that a strongly enhanced, aqueous silver colloid is much more effective than the weak simple silver colloids and silver hydrosols that are found abundantly in the market-place.
To be most effective, it is important to remember to leave the residual liquid coating in the sinuses for at least 10 minutes and refrain from blowing your nose or flushing again. Holding the coating even longer is better, but waiting at least 10 minutes should be sufficient.
It should also be mentioned that since a neti-pot is traditionally used to flush with saline and salt will absolutely render a colloidal suspension of silver ineffective, one should thoroughly rinse the neti-pot that is going to be filled with the enhanced aqueous silver colloid so as to ensure that no residual salt remains to contaminate and render the treatment ineffective.
To best avoid this problem altogether, be sure to purchase a neti-pot that will be used exclusively for colloids and never put a saline solution or salt of any kind into this treatment only vehicle.
The Nature’s Rite Super Neti JuiceTM is packaged as concentrated. It may be diluted by using 10 droppers of the Juice to each ounce of distilled or de-ionized water. The dropper of the Super Neti Juice cap is calibrated to deliver 2 ml each time it is squeezed.
The recommended dilution is 20 ml to each ounce (30 ml) of de-ionized or distilled water. However, you may dilute to your own preference depending on the sensitivity of your nasal passages and sinuses. The product can even be used safely at full strength for maximum microbe killing power.
Sometimes, the sinuses can become irritated from the infection and the mucosa can become raw and inflamed. The non-ionically balanced nature of the enhanced aqueous silver colloid and water can cause a “stinging” sensation as it sits on the raw mucosa.
The stinging is mostly due to the de-ionized water that is within the colloid. This water contains no ions and is therefore not in isotonic balance with the tissues. The longer you hold the solution in your sinuses, the more the stinging subsides. In just a matter of a few minutes, it will become much more tolerable.
It is very important to remember that silver colloids take time to kill. Although they can attenuate a population of bacteria by 10x in a mere 5 minutes, silver colloids do not kill “on contact”. With a 10 minute exposure, the kill ratio will increase from 10x to 100x and in 30 to 40 minutes, the kill ratio can be 1 million to 1.
As we have discussed, since time is the most important parameter, holding the colloid in your sinuses for as long as you can is important for successful treatment. Certainly, after you let it drain out, there will be some still covering the tissues. This will remain for approximately another 5 minutes until the mucosal flow moves it away.
The other important point to remember is that weaker colloids such as 10 ppm, perform very poorly in-situ. A 45ppm (parts per million) colloid will produce a kill of roughly 1000x more than a 10ppm colloid. Colloids of concentration less than 8ppm do very little at all. There is a logarithmic response between kill-ratio and concentration. That is to say that small increases in concentration produce large changes in kill factor.