I’ve had a bad cough and sore throat the past week or so. I detest the taste involved but gargling salt water is pretty effective in ridding me of my sore throat, at least temporarily.
Why is that?
Tibs
- warm water is soothing.
- increased salinity around bacteria cause them to lose lots of water in cell to “dry-up” and die. Not unlike salting a slug.
- Gramma said so.
Se non e vero, e ben trovato,
Spritle
You probably won’t like this better tastewise but gargling with a crushed aspirin and warm water is also pretty effective (probably even more so than with salt).
Okay, the warm water thing I definitely get.
As for #2. Okay so the bacteria dry up and die - this begs the question: Why does my sore throat return, then? Clearly, this is only a temporary fix so I’d assume I’m only killing a portion of the bacteria at a time.
If I’m only killing a portion of the bacteria at any one time (and I would assume that is the case):
- Why doesn’t my throat still hurt from the remaining bacteria?
- Couldn’t I just keep gargling repeatedly until all of it (or very close) was gone?
Also, what I don’t understand is how, in particular, bacteria causes the soreness and how its immediate death could rid me of the soreness. That doesn’t entirely make sense to me.
Anyone? 
Tibs
1)warm water is soothing.
2) increased salinity around bacteria cause them to lose lots of water in cell to “dry-up” and die. Not unlike salting a slug.
3) Gramma said so.
When I got my wisdom teeth pulled, they told me to gargle with warm salt water in order to draw the blood toward the surface of the mucous membranes, where it would help to heal the wound. I was dubious about this, and I got a damn dry socket anyway, but I still gargled faithfully because, like Tiburon, I noticed that it did have a soothing effect.
According to this page, the salt water does dull surface pain, but doesn’t have any effect on bacteria or viruses.
Gargling salt water can provide some temporary relief, but I do not believe it expedites the overall healing process.