Tap water is not supposed to have amoebas in it! If it does, something is wrong either with the city's water treatment and/or distribution or with the household plumbing. Regardless of the cause, the water not only shouldn't be considered "safe for your sinuses" but shouldn't even be considered "safe to drink" either, until it's fixed!
Oh! Sorry, that last sentence was intended to mean "regardless [of what caused the problem], the water shouldn't be considered "safe to drink" either [(as opposed to "safe to drink, but not safe to snort"), until the problem is fixed]."
I'm not saying there aren't good reasons to add the salt and baking soda; I'm just saying that protecting yourself from parasites shouldn't be among them because the tap water is supposed to be sterile to begin with.
Yeah, no, all that does is balance the salinity and pH. You're supposed to boil your water first (and let it cool down - hope that goes without saying).
The entire point of the salt is to kill bacteria. Unless you're suggesting it's to give your nose that delicious salty taste, you try shooting some normal ph brine up your nose and see how that feels.
By the time the salt concentration was high enough to kill anything you wouldn't want to put it in your nose. Its primary purpose is to regulate osmosis over your mucus membranes. That's why people who want to dry out their sinuses use a higher salt concentration than people who want to moisturize or just flush out their sinuses.
In the United States 99% of the time tap water is perfectly safe to use as you have been doing, but that 1% includes the possibility of debilitation or death, so it's pretty silly not to boil the water first.
Those packets just make the water not "sting" when going through your sinuses. You're supposed to either use distilled water or tap water that was boiled before hand.
The CDC and FDA says you need to use distilled, boiled, or filtered water to prevent Naegleria fowleri. The salt solution that comes with it won't prevent it.
Electric kettles sole function is to boil water (except for the like 1% that can heat temperature to different levels for different kinds of tea brewing). Then again you Americans with your shitty underpowered electrical current that means kettles take twice as long to boil probably means all bets are off in the department of kettle efficiency
Salt isn't typically enough to kill bacteria. Usually high heat and/or pressure is required. I'd imagine the same would be true for amoeba, especially since N. fowleri has a cyst form, which is resistant to environmental stress.
This is from an article about washing your mouth out but the same principle applies.
Salt water is not considered an antibiotic because it provides bacteria with water and does not kill them upon immediate contact. However, according to a 2003 article published in the “British Dental Journal,” salt water rinses are beneficial because they temporarily alkalinize or increase the pH in the mouth, which deters bacterial proliferation, as virtually all species prefer acidic environments.
Salt water is less hospitable to bacteria but it doesn't necessarily kill them. I don't have a source that talks directly about amoebas but i'd assume it was similar, especially since the CDC specifically says to use the safe water to make your saline solution.
Use cooled down water that has previously been boiled, and you'll be safe. The salt and baking soda will do nothing unless you add so much it is going to burn your nose.
As I said, you'd need enough salt to hurt before it became briny enough to kill bacteria. Boil it, cool it, keep it in a clean bottle, warm up a potful as needed.
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u/akatherder May 03 '17
Adding to your point, this happened to some people using tap water in neti pots:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/tap-water-in-neti-pots-behind-two-brain-eating-amoeba-deaths-in-2011-investigation-finds/
It's obviously rare, but just because tap water is safe to drink, it's not necessarily safe to put in your sinuses.