A neti pot is a little teapot you use to snort salt water up your nose. “Cougar Town” featured them recently; one of the characters tried to use one, aspirated all the water, and ended up in the emergency room. He referred to it later in the episode as “the Indian death pot.”
Mine is a little white plastic Aladdin's lamp. I mix up a little salt and bicarb with warm water, and I lean forward over the sink, and breathe through my mouth (this is very important), and stick the spout up my nostril, and pour.
I can feel the warm salt water tracing its mystic journey through my sinuses. Then it comes out the other nostril, which is a little gross, but – hey, kids, Circle of Life.
Then I repeat, using the other nostril.
It's supposed to be excellent for sinus infections and such. The Times recently published an article citing medical evidence that the technique is sound.
(Also, it feels amazing. You are actually cleaning the inside of your head. You can practically feel the negative energy draining away into the sink.)
So far I have not been able to con Partner into trying it. He thinks I am trying to do away with him, a la “Cougar Town.” But I've found that many of my acquaintances are secret neti users. My friend Sylvia warned me that sometimes the water builds up in your sinuses, and if you should lean forward during (let's say) an important meeting, water might start gushing out of your nose.
I mentioned this to another acquaintance, a Brown University policeman. He looked startled. “That actually happened to me during a morning briefing,” he said. “It was pretty embarrassing.”
This hasn't happened to me yet.
But I'm sure it will.
And it will be awesome.
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