Apparently.
but what, precisely, were you doing? Did you have the water at the right temperature? How much salt/water? Did you use baking soda or the premixed packets? Did you tilt your head the wrong way and end up pouring the water down your throat instead? Some help here? 
Slightly OT - the generic name for “Claratin” is “loratidine”. Around here, I find the generic to be half the price of the brand name. You might want to consider buying the generic version.
I started using one of these things daily when this thread started, but I’m still not seeing any improvement. Maybe my nose is just messed up in a way that this can’t help. It’s been broken a few times; once quite badly. My goal has been to be able to breathe through both nostrils. Is that at least theoretically possible? On a good day, one nostril is open, but most of the time, I’m a mouthbreather. Also, I still find the solution flows much more easily from left nostril to right than vice versa. Is that normal?
Now, here’s a (very slight) problem that I haven’t seen anyone else mention:
I do my neti potting over the kitchen sink, for a modest but real level of relief from chronically clogged and/or runny nasal passages. Lately, one or both of Sophie and Eddy will jump up to the edge of the sink, lean in, and try to lap or bite the skinny stream of water exiting my nostril.
My kittiesdo that too. The only way I can keep them from interfering is by putting my head even further down into the sink and make strange gargling noises at them.
It may be you have a physical deviation of the septum of the nose due to your old fractures. In this case, the neti pot will tend to be less effective. Just as a flush of water may clear out a plugged pipe, but won’t straighten out a bent, kinked pipe.
I just wanted to report back after using this for a bit…one word: awesome. A word of advice too…use a genuine Neti Pot. I bought a similar product at the grocery store which had a small nozzle instead of a nostril-fitting spout and it didn’t work nearly as well. The real Neti Pot fits snugly in one nostril and keeps the fluid from coming back out that way. After a couple of weeks using this once a day I can report a genuine improvement in my breathing. I’m also suffering from a standard 1 month cold that would normally have turned into a sinus infection by now…breathing free and clear.
I highly recommend that anyone with sinus problems (or even just a cold) give this a week trial and see if it helps you too. Nothing better than being able to get at something on your body that wasn’t possible before…like your arms growing another 6 inches and being able to scratch an itch on your back that you could never reach. 
Heeey…waitaminnit!! 
I started using a neti pot 5 years ago after it was recommended to me by my pulmonary allergy specialist. I had been referred to her after exhausting all the treatment options offered by a pulmonary specialist. I had hyperreactive airway disease (asthma and bronchospasms) so severe only massive doses of steroids would help. Eventually the steroids put me in heart failure. My ejection fraction was 40% and my peak flows were 145. Normal EF should be 60-70% and peak flows should be >400
I thought the chronic sinusitis was only a symptom of the airway disease but the allergist thought it might actually be the cause of it. She recommended the neti pot and although I thought it sounded pretty radical, I felt so ill I would have tried anything.
At first the water would take forever to trickle through but I felt better immediately and my lungs were less “twitchy” so I hung in there. When the stuff finally started to drain it was equal parts impressive and revolting. I even snorfed out what amounted to a super ball of tissue (probably a polyp). I found I needed the rescue inhaler less and less and was soon able to cut out the nebulizer treatments completely. Now I take no medications on a regular basis, my peak flows are >450 and I haven’t used a nebulizer or rescue inhaler in years. I also lost the 25 pounds I gained from the steroids.
My results may not be typical. I was weaned off the meds by my family physician and I’m not saying “buy a neti pot and throw away your asthma meds”. I’m just saying, for me, it was as close to a cure for asthma as I was ever going to get. If you have chronic sinusitis or asthma you should definitely give it a try; what have you go to lose?
Another Isabella fan! SCHWEEEEEEET!
I loves me some Isabella and Chinaberry.
Yeah, and even cheaper if you buy it in vats at Costco. I think my bottle of 400 or so tablets was about $10. It might be worth a Costco membership just for the OTC meds, if you take them regularly.
I use a squeeze bottle, myself, and I’ve never had trouble getting the water through. It’s an 8 oz bottle and I get roughly half through each nostril, squeezing until it’s empty. I am curious about the pot, though. Seems a little less convenient, but if sustained water flow is important, then it might be a better idea. (I get the water through, but the entire thing takes less than 15 seconds.) I figure when I finish this (new) box of salt packets I’ll try an actual pot.
I also get it through my throat, as well. I lean pretty far forward but still trying to adjust.
That’s the same exact one which my pharmacist gave me. My problem with it: I can’t squeeze half the bottle out (4 ounces) with just one squeeze.
If you’re bored, it’s fun to use the thing and then amuse yourself by tilting your head upside down, then different ways to make water trickle out of your head unexpectedly.
What?
That’s really inspiring! I know what it’s like to find something that helps so much you can ditch your other meds over time, and it’s like a miracle, isn’t it?
I’m really hoping my sinuses are a significant chunk of my remaining problems and that this helps. Only time will tell, I guess. If I at least avoid the one antibiotic-requiring infection I get every year, that will save me 3 PTO days at work. That would be significant, because all but 3 of my PTO days every year end up being used as sick leave, and I’m extraordinarily sick of not having a life. If I don’t get the infection, then that’s six days a year to use for fun. In the almost nine years I’ve been at my current position, only once have I taken a full week off for vacation.
I’m trying not to get my hopes too high that a lot of my other sick days are somehow sinus related. But dang, it would be nice if they were and if the neti pot helped. So far, I’ve seen improvement that comes and goes with my sense of smell, and I breathe better, but that’s it. And that might be all there is for me. If so, it is really cool to be able to smell things. I made chili this weekend, and when I opened the jar of cumin I couldn’t believe it. I’ve never smelled it before, and it’s really pungent.
Also, I have been starting to snore the last couple of years, and I had trouble breathing if I slept on my back. I notice that I’ve now started sleeping on my back and don’t seem to have trouble with it, so that’s kind of nice too.
Anyway, congratulations on finding your way back to better health.
Many folks benefit from more prolonged exposure to the saline solution, allowing it to soften hardened mucous, slowly trickle into the sinuses, and give the nasal tissues more time in contact with the solution, which will help to reduce dryness/swelling as the case may be.
But if the fast blast works for you, there’s no reason to change it.
We bought a Neti Pot because of this thread. It’s been going well for 3 days or so. Then this morning, it poured down my throat, and I vomited my breakfast into the sink.
Just please say you didn’t throw up through your nose…
Another benefit of the neti pot over the spray that I’ve heard is that the flow of water can help create suction that draws out the mucous from deeper in the sinuses. I used to use the sprays too but I much prefer the neti pot now.
Thankfully, no. But it was rather sudden.
OK, I got brave and tried an actual Neti Pot instead of a squeeze bottle tonight. I could have sworn I felt water trickling into places it wasn’t reaching before, but perhaps that was the power of Qadgop’s suggestion at work. 
Anyway, the pot worked well for me, so I’ll stick with it for a while for comparison. I’m still glad I started with the squeeze bottle, though. One of the reasons I had trouble with the Neti pot the first time I tried it was that I was very uncomfortable with the whole head-tilt thing, water went everywhere (or disappeared into my sinuses without pouring back out), and I felt like I was drowning.
Part of that was how blocked my nasal passages were. Part of it, though, I think was simple reflex on my part. I’ve spent a lot of time in the water, so when I feel water in my sinuses, my instinct is to clamp my soft palate on inhalation to seal off my nose so I don’t swallow water, then exhale through my nose on exhalation with my mouth shut. This instinct does not mesh well with allowing water to flow continuously through your nose, and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to breathe while the water was flowing. So the shorter bursts of water flow with the bottle helped me sort it out.
As I became more confident with the squeeze bottle, I’ve also been tilting my head more so I could figure out that aspect of things.
Anyway, I used a full cup through each side with the Neti, and managed to breathe. Half way through I’d start feeling like I was drowning, but I just made myself relax and notice that I could breathe just fine. I think the moral of the story is that if the CIA ever wants anything out of me, all they have to do is mention waterboarding, and I’ll crack. Now let’s hope that the next time I go swimming, I don’t inhale a bunch of water!