If you have been recently exposed or infected to COVID-19
Would something as simple as irrigating your sinuses with salt-water help decrease
your risk of getting very sick and going to the hospital with COVID? If a recent
study out of Georgia is to be believed, the answer could very well be yes.
Over the past year and a half or more as we ve been dealing with the effects of COVID 19
throughout the world the biggest struggle we have had is not having effective and easily accessible
treatments to help decrease the risk of somebody getting really sick with COVID
and having to go to the hospital or even dying once they have already been infected.
A recent study out of Augusta University in Georgia had some promising data
looking at the use of nasal irrigation or flushing your nasal passages out with salt water
to help decrease your risk of staying out of the hospital after being infected with COVID.
They invited patients over the age of 55 that had been diagnosed with COVID-19 who were otherwise
healthy to start with a nasal irrigation regimen as soon as possible after diagnosis.
They divided them in two groups. One group took ? teaspoon of baking soda added to a premade mixture
of salt and baking soda and the other group took ? teaspoon or 2.5 ml of a 10% iodine solution
added to the same salt and baking soda mixture. Then using one of two devices,
either a sinus rinse bottle made by NeilMed or the Navage nasal irrigation system, Each of the groups
mixed their solution with 1 cup of purified water to use twice a day for 14 days once the diagnosis
was made. They then looked at how these group did compared to the expected hospitalization rate
found from 3 million cases complied by the CDC for a similar population.
In this study there ended up being 79 patients enrolled. 42 used the baking soda additive and
37 used the iodine additive. In the baking soda group 1 person was hospitalized and in the iodine
group there were no hospitalizations. When compared to the expected hospitalization rate,
they showed an 8 times decrease when compared to the national average.
Now there are some limitations to this study. The most important one was that the number of
participants were relatively small, so more study is still needed. However,
as the authors of the study discussed some of these limitations, they noted that other studies
looking at hospitalization rates for a similar patient populations and demographics as theirs
had much higher rates of being admitted to the hospital than the national average.
This suggests that the likely the benefit may be even greater than reported. This study still is in
pre-print meaning that it hasn t been through the full peer review process and published
but it does give an interesting option that we can pursue in our attempts to battle this pandemic.
The interesting thing though about this is that despite the limitations there are some
things that we can learn. First is that saline irrigation is a safe and established treatment
for respiratory viral infections. There have been several studies looking at the ability of saline
irrigation to help decrease symptoms and the viral load for different respiratory infections. This is
actually a much underutilized treatment for our common cold. The second is that it is cheap and
available. All the ingredients that are needed are easily found at your neighborhood pharmacy.
Now please don t interpret this study as the cure for COVID-19. I wouldn t count on it to protect
myself or my family. Vaccination still is the most proven method to prevent severe disease. So if you
haven t gotten the vaccine, I urge you to do it or talk to your doctor if you have concerns about it.
If you are at high risk for severe illness, and you can get it, early treatment with the
mononclonal antibody therapy can be very effective. However, the reality of life is that
many have chosen not to be vaccinated or they just don t have access to the kind of care that they
need. Having something readily accessible, cheap and safe that can potentially help decrease your
risk of getting really sick can be a valuable tool as we continue to deal with this pandemic.
As I said before, there are a still a lot of unanswered questions from this study
like, what would happen if you started using this when you were exposed before even having symptoms?
Would it help at the very onset of symptoms before you were even tested?
Those are interesting questions that we don t know about how it would apply in this situation.
If the results of these hypothetical studies were anything like other studies
looking at saline irrigation for respiratory viruses, it could be a very important tool.
So talk to your own doctor about how this may be a benefit to you.
So we just went over this interesting study but now you are probably wondering about how
you do nasal saline irrigation. Well don t you worry, I made a companion video to this
one that you can find right here that walks you through how you can safely do nasal irrigation
and how to even make your own supplies. So click here to keep learning.
For everybody else, we just wanted to thank you for spending a few mintues with us today.
Hopeflly it s helped you learn a little bit more about this important topic. I find that
the more you take charge and know about your own health the better off you will be. That s why we
create these videos, so you can take a bigger role in your healthcare decisions. So thanks
again for being with us and we hope to see you in the next video.