There are portable vaporiser machines currently being marketed for use when sick to breathe in a salt solution – would this be bad for your lungs? I have used these type of devices for asthma when I’m sick with a prescribed medication solution, however, I’m interested if anyone has tried this with just water (and does it work?) Or with the salt solution (and does it work?) Or is salt a very bad idea as can the salt crystallise on your lungs?
In: Biology
What a wonderful question. I didn’t even know this genre of products existed, and the question opened my eyes to this.
1. I went through the products and tried to find if there’s any science behind it, and I couldn’t find any.
2. Salt has the property of absorbing water, or more specifically in this case, the body can’t tolerate salt on the membranes, so it’ll actively absorb the salt and excess water on the membrane to get to isotonicity.
3. Salt, even in small concentrations, has the excellent ability to kill or inhibit microbes. This is very helpful with sinus infections.
4. Salt has the unfortunate tendency to increase blood pressure.
5. Asthmatics do feel better when breathing salty sea air. This is not equivalent to aerosolized salt particles. For once, the concentration isn’t guaranteed to be similar.
6. Since there’s no science backing it, I don’t think anyone has bothered to validate the short term and long term effects of this salt aerosolizers
7. All this salt in air will also wreck havoc on your walls, electrical devices, etc.
Overall, it will probably alleviate symptoms asthma and sinus infections, but nobody knows the true health impacts of these. Until science catches up, I don’t recommend using these. Just stick to your daily asthma management inhalers.
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