Salt Water Proposed as Cure for Common Cold in Children
by Kenny Luna, North Babylon, NY on 02. 7.08
With cold and flu season in full swing, there’s more than a few parents worried about how to treat their children's colds without traditional medication and the answer just may be a dose of salt water.
Researchers in Europe recently reported that a nasal spray made from Atlantic Ocean seawater eased wintertime cold symptoms while preventing them from returning among children ages 6 to 10.
And while the exact reason why it works is not yet known, researchers at the Teaching Hospital of Brno in the Czech Republic believe it could be that salt water has a simple mechanical effect of clearing mucus, or even that trace elements found in it may play a role.
Perhaps not surprisingly, saline washes have long been mentioned as a treatment for the common cold, but the fact that the USFDA recently declared that children under 2 should not be given non-prescription cough and cold medicines due to the potential for dangerous side effects is also bringing new relevance to this age-old remedy.
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via:: Green Daily
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Heh, maybe there is something to those Neti Pots.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Neti+pot
Reading the linked article, It's interesting that the company (Goemar) that produces this 'special seawater' spray (Physiomer) funded the Czech study. No wonder the researchers mention that the trace elements in this special seawater 'could' play a role! Nowhere in the article does it mention that they compared this 'special seawater' against an ordinary salt and water saline rinse, a well known treatment. Table salt and tap water are practically free, so Goemar probably wouldn't be happy if the study included this control! After all, what they're seeking is brand legitimization. Get a neti pot if you must. But until a proper study is done, there is no reason to believe that trace elements or special seawater are any better than plain old saline.
The saline solution is also used when the children have nasal congestion. The best thing of this remedy is that we can prepare it in home or if we preferred we bought it in the drugstore.
As a parent, I think I won't try to squirt water up my daughters nose.
Arerea, good comment!
I wouldn't use tap water if it's has fluoride added to it. Fluoride is a toxic drug that you shouldn't inject. Think I'm joking? Look at the back of your toothpaste with added fluoride. It says to call the poison control hotline if you swallow the toothpaste. What the heck do you think is in most of our (USA) drinking water? FLUORIDE! Yum! So yeah I'll take a trip out to the Gulf of Mexico sometime and bottle some free water and snort it sometime to see how it works (honest).
And if it is something special about seawater you can buy sea salt easily enough also. But I doubt this is the case, just using a normal saline rinse if most likely effective in breaking up congestion.
Even if that company makes some profitit is still better than using all these medicines.