This is not true for all nasal sprays, just for nasal sprays that contain certain decongestants. The way these nasal sprays work is that they shrink the blood vessels in your nose, thereby shrinking the tissue and opening up the nasal passages. The problem is, it’s not good to keep those blood vessels constricted, because your tissue needs oxygen and nutrients delivered by blood.
When the medication wears off, the blood vessels expand again and your body tries to expand them ever more to get more blood in there that it was missing before. The result is that you’re even more congested, and you use more of the spray. This turns into a vicious cycle where you keep using the spray to relieve the congestion and your body keeps pushing back by pushing trying harder to keep the blood vessels open, and you end up needing more and more of the spray and it works less and less.
After more than a few days, even after the cause of the congestion is gone, your blood vessels remain inflamed and your nasal passages remain swollen and closed up, and this takes a long time to clear up on its own.
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