Oh Nose!

October 4, 2006 2:09 PM

My nose. She will not stop whistling.

I went to Denver a few weeks ago, and, as occasionally happens, the dry air made my nose start to whistle. Well, it's 20 days later, and the whistle is still there.

I have tried blowing it, picking it, jamming a q-tip as far as it would into it, and nothing has helped. I breathe deeply in the shower to encourage the moisture to collapse whatever subterranean mucas structure is causing the whistle, but to no avail.

Fortunatey it's not always there -- normal breathing isn't usually enough to activate it, so it's not driving everyone around me crazy. But it's driving ME crazy...

posted by o2b to health & fitness (8 comments total)

Neti pot with saline solution, or snort it out of your hand.
posted by craniac at 2:15 PM on October 4, 2006

Do you have a nasal hair problem? Sometimes I get a hair positioned just right as to cause a whistle. No amount of blowing will dislodge it -- I just have to get in there with the hedge trimmers.
posted by thanotopsis at 3:23 PM on October 4, 2006

I second neti pot. It's not nearly as gross as it looks or sounds, and honestly it feels great.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 4:29 PM on October 4, 2006

Neti pots lack "oomph" for my nose. I picked up a nasal saline irrigator from my local drugstore for cheap. It's a plastic bottle with premeasured & buffered salt packets. Sadly, my google-fu is letting me down and I can't recall the name.
posted by chairface at 5:04 PM on October 4, 2006

This thread is excellent! Hee hee! I laffed at the assigning of a personal pronoun to the nose. It made-a me speak-a with a bad Italian accent-a. Then I got to see the wonderful picture of BuddhaBucket's woman doing the neti and looking right into the camera without cracking up. Fantastic! Thank you magic website!
posted by kookoobirdz at 7:43 PM on October 4, 2006 [1 favorite]

Here's my favourite photo of somebody using a neti pot. Hope you like it, kookoobirdz.

I like the idea that neti pots lack "oomph."
posted by blue grama at 9:11 PM on October 4, 2006

Please forgive me for my indelicacy, but have you tried getting your finger wet and then thoroughly wetting the inside of your nose? If snuffling in the shower won't call the moisture in, then you have to bring the water there by force.

An option that's slightly more capable of being discussed in polite society is doing exactly the same thing with Ayr gel. Fingers are still more useful than Q-Tips, though.

If you want to bring out the big guns, go for Zicam swabs. You may want to be cautious -- some people (a few hundred) lost their sense of smell after their first exposure to the way Zicam delivers zinc. But if you've already used Zicam without any side effects, then you know you're okay with it. I find Zicam works better than anything else.
posted by booksandlibretti at 10:25 PM on October 4, 2006

Found it. It's from NeilMed. It's patented, so you know it has to be good.
posted by chairface at 8:46 AM on October 5, 2006