8 out of 10 French people do not clean the inside of their nose apart from nasal problems. What about your nasal hygiene habits? An IPSOS study was carried out to know the habits and customs of the French in terms of nasal hygiene.
Nose washing is done with salt water because the blood plasma of our body is composed of a salt solution dosed at 9 g per litre.
For daily hygiene, it is best to use salt water that has the same concentration as our body serum , i.e. isotonic , to avoid any possible exchange by osmolarity.
Seawater taken from the oceans is characterized by a salt concentration around 35g per liter on average. Its concentration is therefore reduced to reach that of our blood plasma. This isotonic seawater therefore contains sodium chloride (salt) but also mineral salts and trace elements (iron, zinc, iodine, copper, selenium, manganese, magnesium…)
These trace elements have interesting properties like for example:
Isotonic seawater and the physiological serum therefore have the same salt concentration . There are different possibilities for washing the nose with an isotonic saline solution:
According to the ipsos study carried out in 2015, 96% of French people claim to occasionally suffer from colds or nasopharyngitis, and 78% at least once a year.
1 out of 2 French people say they sometimes wash the inside of their nose, mostly during colds. Indeed, 8 out of 10 French people do not practice nasal hygiene apart from an ENT pathology .
78% say they saw faster improvement nasal congestion and other associated symptoms. Among the solutions offered, seawater sprays are the most popular.
Despite the benefits it brings, daily nasal hygiene does not meet a need, so it is not practiced as often as it should.
Parents feel more concerned about their child's nasal hygiene than their own:82% claim to wash the inside of the nose of their child under 3 years old. 72% do it for their child aged 3 to 6 and only 61% say that their children aged 6 to 12 wash their noses. saline and the baby blower the most used. After 6 years it is seawater sprays which are acclaimed.
Nose washing is done daily when children are sick and suffer from ENT pathologies. Again, the younger the child, the more frequently it is renewed during the day.
The benefits observed in children and the most cited are mainly a less stuffy nose and free breathing .
In prevention, fewer parents are concerned about their child's nasal hygiene, and only 18% of children aged 6 to 12 do so as a hygiene gesture which is carried out in this case a times a week for the majority.
There is little comparative data on the habit of washing the nose or not around the world. Some differences are nevertheless reported.
Nose hygiene is widely popularized in Scandinavian and Eastern countries. In the latter and especially in Poland, there is a “salt culture”:salt caves where halotherapy (salt therapy) is practiced are very widespread. It was in Russia that the first salt caves appeared, you lie down there for several hours to breathe the ambient air. Halotherapy improves respiratory comfort in certain lung and nasal conditions.
In India, the Ayurveda tradition has promoted nasal washing for generations.
Whatever your habits, nose hygiene, in addition to hand hygiene, is the basis for the prevention of winter pathologies.
