I’ve seen that you should buy distilled water to rinse your nose with, but I probably get regular water in my eyes and nose when I shower anyways wouldn’t it be dangerous while showering also?
In: Biology
There is a very small chance of certain microorganisms in the water passing through thinner membranes of the sinuses into the brain. Tap water is usually free of these but not 100%. Distilled water will be free of these because it’s been boiled.
When you shower there isn’t as much water going as deeply into your sinuses.
Water stagnates in the sinus cavity. It’s impossible to prevent.
It is slowly absorbed into the soft tissue. If that water contains the type of creature that causes deadly brain infections just so happens to be in that water….. you could be horribly fucked.
Read this story:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tap-water-in-neti-pots-behind-two-brain-eating-amoeba-deaths-in-2011-investigation-finds/
Use distilled. Add table salt if you want saline.
You don’t insufflate that much water in the shower. At least if you’re doing it right. One rinse is probably 1000x the amount of water. (And this is a lowball) Three years worth of showers in a few minutes.
More exposure means a better chance for the microbes to survive and implant and do their thing.
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But why not just boiled water? Why distilled?
There was a case of a teen near me who died of some waterborne “brain eating amoeba” as they called it after just taking a shower, so that can happen too lol.
Three people have died from tapwater-filled neti-pots over the past three decades. [https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/neti-pots-nasal-rinsing-devices-linked-potentially-deadly-amoeba](https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/neti-pots-nasal-rinsing-devices-linked-potentially-deadly-amoeba)
That death rate of ONE PERSON EVERY TEN YEARS is considered by some people to be unacceptably risky for too little reward. I don’t believe it — it seems crazy small compared to the risk/reward profiles of almost everything else I do in my life.
German here: No one would use distilled water to rinse your nose. No doctor would ask you not to use tap water. Crazy.
All that is important to us is the saline level.
There is a really short path between your nasal cavities and your brain which makes it relatively easy for infections to pass from the nasal cavity into the brain. The last thing you want is for microbes from tap water getting into your brain. Treating brain infections is really hard due to the blood-brain barrier potentially blocking antibiotics from reaching the brain and swelling of the brain due to white blood cells flooding the area as your immune system reacts to the infection is really bad because there is not much room in the skull cavity for your brain to swell.
Meningitis is the infection and inflammation of the fluid and membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord and even if you survive it it can have serious long lasting side effects like brain damage and months of physical therapy.
The difference between this two is equivalent to the difference between rinsing your mouth with water and filling your lungs with water.
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