Considering that cold and flu season is almost upon us I'm pretty interested to read that gargling with salt water can reduce chance of infection and ease symptoms.
In a randomized study published in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2005, researchers recruited almost 400 healthy volunteers and followed them for 60 days during cold and flu season. Some of the subjects were told to gargle three times a day. At the end of the study period, the group that regularly gargled had a nearly 40 percent decrease in upper respiratory tract infections compared with the control group, and when they did get sick, “gargling tended to attenuate bronchial symptoms,” the researchers wrote.
40% is huge! I'll have to add this to my new flossing regimen. I wonder if the gargling would add anything over my periodic use of my neti-pot?
I can absolutely attest that this works. What I do is this. When I start to feel the symptoms come on, or if I have waited to long (either way), I gargle with the following combination :1/3 warm water, 1/3 listerine (or scope), and 1/3 hydrogen peroxide. I'll gargle for a good minute, with breaks in between every little bit, and swish around my mouth some.. In a day or so of doing that a couple times per day, I'm pretty much over it.
The other thing I also do is make sure to clean my ears out. For this, I take a cap full of hydrogen peroxide and put that each ear. I keep it in my ear until I hear it bubbling, and then let it remain there for a minute or so. Then drain, and repeat for the other ear. After a few hours after I have drained the peroxide out, I go back and use a syringe with warm water and rinse them out.
These two things pretty much take care of anything I ever get, and I rarely need to take any meds.