5 Ways to Ease Dry Nasal Passages Without a Prescription

Why Are My Sinuses So Dry?

The mucous membranes in your nose are designed to trap environmental dust, debris, and pollens and keep them from reaching the lower respiratory tract and lungs. When you have dry sinuses, the potential for those molecules to reach the lungs increases. Not to mention, dry sinuses can crack and tear making another entry point for infection into your body.

As I’ve gotten older and learned a bit more about taking care of myself, I’ve figured out a thing or two about how to keep the sinuses moisturized until my mucous membranes adjust to the new environment. Read on for five tips on how to help your sinuses feel better naturally!

Check Your Beverages

The first tip I have for you is to check your drink. Are you drinking enough to keep yourself hydrated? And, please don’t hate me, are you drinking a lot of caffeine? Caffeine is a diuretic (it’s dehydrating) so it can be difficult to adequately hydrate if you’re having more than a token cup in the morning. I love black tea in the morning so I know how hard it can be to give up your morning ritual. Try to cut back until your body adjusts to the lower humidity caused by the heat.

Go Warm and Hydrating

Since we’re already talking about nutrition, my second tip is to add in herbal teas, soups, stews, and any other juicy, comforting foods that you like. I just read a really interesting article about pleasure and nutrition and how studies are showing if you enjoy the food you’re eating, it’s nourishing you more than if you’re receiving the same nutrient profile from something you don’t enjoy. Super interesting! Anyway, as you’re enjoying your nice, hydrating foods and beverages take a moment to inhale the steam they are offering.

As far as tasty herbals that might be helpful, I find red rooibos comforting as well as energetically moistening to the system. It’s also naturally decaffeinated and hosts more health benefits than I have time to list here.

Add Steam to Your Environment

A lot of people use vaporizers. I’m not a fan. A hot shower can be helpful, but at 3 gallons of water per minute, plus a water heater that takes money to run and probably won’t keep up well after a while it can get expensive.

I prefer simmer pots. Have you ever done a simmer pot? Do you know what a simmer pot is? A simmer pot is a big pot of water you put on your stove. If you’re old enough and lucky enough to have known your grandparents, you may have seen a large pot sitting on their wood stove. That was a simmer pot.

At a minimum, it’s just a pot with water on low heat that is sending moisture into your environment. You know I can’t leave anything alone, so I like to add herbs, spices, and sometimes fruit to make the house smell yummy while raising the humidity levels. What you add (or don’t) to the pot can be strategic. Maybe you just want the house to smell good, maybe you’re also suffering with some congestion.

I recently read about someone starting a simmer pot that ended up being an immune boosting, scratchy throat relieving tea. The whole house was sick with a respiratory bug and instead of mom-ing everyone individually she told them to hit the simmer pot for a cup of wellness. I thought that was brilliant! Unfortunately, I can’t find the article anymore…

Enjoy! And remember to turn the stove off before you go to bed. Safety is important!

Steaming Your Sinuses

I’ve already mentioned taking a big inhale of the steam coming off your soup or tea, and who could resist a good sniff over a simmer pot, but we can be a lot more intentional by creating a steam inhalation station for a specific treatment for your dry sinuses. It’s a pretty simple setup that you can do with things you already have around the house. Find a heat friendly bowl (think a big soup bowl), boil some water, and grab a bath towel. Place your bowl on a heat safe surface, pour in some boiling water, bend over the bowl with your face close enough to feel the steam (but not burn), drape your head and the bowl with a towel and breathe in through your nose. You could add moistening or demulcent herbs appropriate for helping ease the nasal dryness.

Herbal Neti Rinse

Do you use a neti pot to rinse your sinuses? It’s a pretty polarizing piece of equipment. Most people love it or hate it. For nasal dryness I find the neti pot to be an essential tool. Especially since I started integrating herbs into my neti rinse. Mullein tincture + saline water = almost immediate relief from dryness (for me) in a sinus rinse. Check the Helpful Articles section for more information on selecting herbs for nasal dryness to use in a neti rinse.

What if you don’t have herbal tinctures? I’ve brewed teas and used those diluted in my sinus rinse for different things. I don’t recommend getting wild and crazy with what you’re pouring up your nose without further study and some experience actually using a neti pot. If you do want to use a neti pot just getting the saline solution into your sinuses can help and the herbs aren’t required.

Fun fact about saline

Saline is a salty water designed for use internally or on/with mucous membranes. The salt used in saline water can be very drying to the skin. But used in a neti rinse it can actually help moisturize the mucous membranes in the nose. If you wear contacts, you probably have a bottle of saline contact solution in your bathroom cabinet that you use to maintain your contacts and moisturize your eyes when they get dry. And if you’ve ever had surgery or spent any time in the hospital it’s likely you’ve been given an IV drip of saline to combat dehydration. Also, those hydration powders everyone seems to be dumping in their water bottles right now are full of salt. So, salt is good for hydrating internally, but is drying externally.

Helpful Articles

It’s Allergy Season in the South!
Can eating pleasure be a lever for healthy eating? A systematic scoping review of eating pleasure and its links with dietary behaviors and health
Get Your Vitamin P: Why Pleasure Matters When It Comes to What You Eat
Using Herbs With Your Neti Pot

Dry sinuses can be aggravating and painful and I hope this gives article gives you some simple techniques to add to your arsenal of self-care tricks. Drop a comment if you have other suggestions for simple, at-home techniques to relieve dry sinuses.

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