In this video I am going to tell you 5 tips to improve your nasal spray technique. At the end you will know how to avoid side effects and boost the effectiveness of these sprays. See below for the links to the sprays mentioned in this video.
Hi there my name is vic veer i’m an ent consultant surgeon working in central london for the national health service in england in this video i’m going to tell you all about nasal sprays and how to use them correctly because there’s really no point to taking a nasal spray getting all the side effects and none of the benefits so in this video i’m going to tell
You five tips and one bonus tip at the end of how to use these things properly so the first thing you have to remember is that for this spray to work it needs to go up into your nose and stain your nose for it to work this seems very obvious but i see an awful lot of people when they use the spray spray like this and then they go and snip it right up and then
You end up tasting it and it all goes away so the first tip is really if you spray this up your nose do not sniff straight away leave it in your nose for it to work and for it to sort of marinate inside your nose the longer it stays in your nose the longer it stays in contact with the lining of your nose the more it will work the better it will work for you so
Now we’re on to tip number two if you’re going to spray these sprays up your nose you need to make sure the spray actually touches the lining of your nose it doesn’t touch the mucus or the bogey or whatever else is in your nose so what i recommend you do is you clean out your nose of all the mucus and all the debris inside your nose using some salt water or like
A hypertonic sterile which is what this is if you’ve got sinus problems i’d use uh neal med sinus roots and i’ll leave a picture of it just here somewhere don’t use water obviously because water makes your nose even more congested than before but the idea is that you use the salt water to flush out all that mucus so when you eventually do go onto your spray when
You spray it and you don’t sniff up when you spray it it stays in your nose and it sits on the actual skin not on the mucus because you’re not trying to treat the mucus you’re trying to treat the actual lining of your nose so now we’re on to tip number three what we’re trying to do is get the spray up into your nose and hit the areas which are most likely to swell
Up and cause you blockage you need to know a little bit of anatomy for this this little part here in the middle is called the septum or the midline partition of your nose is the septum and that doesn’t really swell up an awful lot the areas that do swell up are actually on the sides on the outside or the lateral part of your nose and in this area you have things
Called the turbinates the turbulence a bit like gills when you see them side on they’re these things that come in so if you’ve got the side wall of your nose like this and they come in like this there’s an inferior middle superior even a supreme so sometimes they’re up to four of these sort of uh out pouchings or just sort of areas which look like gills on the side
And these swell up and shrink down depending on how fast you’re breathing in if you’re allergic to anything or even what side you sleep on if you sleep on this side this side of your nose will open up the turbulence will shrink down but the turbulence will swell up on this side if you slept on this side however the opposite happens if you sometimes if you press
On the side of your arm here it’s called nepalese reflex that can cause your turbulence to shrink down on the other side it’s a very weird reflex there’s also something called a nasal cycle where the turbinates take it in turns to swell up and shrink down but that’s beside the point what i’m trying to show you is that the spray should be getting to the turbinates
Which are on the side of your nose not in the midline so when you spray this up your nose what i recommend is that you’re spraying into your right this is my right nostril you use your right hand and you point it towards your ear so you’re pointing it that way towards you because you’re trying to get it to the tablets which sit laterally or just near where this
Bone is here you’re not trying to put it directly back or directly up going up doesn’t make any sense at all because there’s nothing up there you breathe through the bottom part of your nose down there not up there and when you’re going on to the left side you change hands so your left hand for your left nostril and then you can point it towards this ear again so
It just naturally your hand sits in that position which means that it points the right direction again before you spray clean your nose out firstly with this and spray and don’t sniff it up leave it in your mouth breathe through your mouth afterwards don’t go because then by the time you taste it it’s all gone now some people may be taking steroid sprays because
Of polyps that can occur inside your nose now this is actually between the in the inferior and the middle turbinate so in that little space between the two polyps arise from that area there you don’t get polyps arising from the septum of your nose so again this works for people with polyps as well aim it sort of that way towards your earlobe just about here the
Better you direct these sprays and you don’t sniff it up and you clean it out beforehand the better you do that the less chance there is for you to need an operation or to have your polyps removed again so tip number four do not sneeze directly after spraying this up your nose because all of that good stuff is going to come out you’re not going to get treated as you
Want to be treated now this may be easier said than done but a trick to stop you from sneezing straight after doing this is that if you feel a sneeze is about to come on press very hard here just underneath your septum or just underneath the nose just here press hard against the top teeth and press really hard so it slightly hurts that will get rid of the sneeze
So the urge of a sneeze will just go away if you catch it early enough like this some people just press straight away after spraying this because they know they always sneeze after putting the spray up their nose that little technique of pressing hard here is quite useful as well if you’ve been told after an operation that don’t sneeze or try and sneeze with your
Mouth open because you may start bleeding all you have to do is press very hard here and the urge of sneezing will just go away so we’re on to tip number five now we’re nearly to the end you need to make sure you’re on the right spray for your problem and make sure you’re not taking too much of the wrong spray so for example decongestants such as sudafed and
Otravene you can only use those for about five to seven days if you use them any longer than that you’ll get something known as rhinitis medical mentosa which means that your nose sort of becomes addicted to it you keep using those ultraviolene type decongestant sprays eventually your nose gets more and more reliant on it and you’ll find that the effectiveness
Of these decongestant sprays get shorter and shorter so initially oh wow this spray worked for eight hours but if you use it for longer than a week you’ll find that oh actually it’s only lasting a few hours now and i have to keep using it and you end up using it all day every day spraying all the time and what’s happening is that your nose the decongestant stops
All the blood flow that goes to your nose this works brilliantly if you’ve got a cold for a few days and you can use the decongestant spray during a cold or during sinusitis just to open up your nose very quickly but the problem with decongestants if you’re not letting any blood go into your nose your nose gets desperate for oxygen so as soon as the decongestant
Effect wears off the blood pours back in your nose sort of swells up and you can’t breathe at all then you reach for the decongestant again to try and get that spray to work again trying to unblock your nose you get into so a horrible cycle where you’re constantly trying to clear your nose and you’re using the ultraviolene more and more eventually you’re sort of
Addicted to it so if you end up using decongestants a lot you get some of the side effects people commonly see with people who use too much cocaine so just don’t use it for more than four or five days it’s really important and it protects your nose from getting this horrible problem rhinitis medical mentosa so some of you have been given some steroid sprays for
Your nose and some of them are very good some of them aren’t so good because you can only use them for about three months ago so so these are some of the names of drugs that you can’t use for more than three months otherwise you get some of the long-term bad effects of using these steroid sprays because the steroid doesn’t just stay in your nose it percolates
Through the rest of your body give you side effects for your whole body rather than just staying in your nose so some of these sprays that you can get which you only should be using for less than three months are the equivalent to taking oral tablets of steroids and therefore and therefore you can get all the side effects of steroids and i’ll give you some of
The list of things that can happen to you here there are some steroid sprays out there which have very low bioavailability and what that means is that when you spread up your nose it just stays in your nose it doesn’t go through your whole body doesn’t give you side effects throughout the rest of your body and that’s why you can use them long term so this spray
Here pyramids which you can buy from tesco or any supermarket is also known as fluticasone proprionate and this spray is quite safe that’s why you can get it over the counter whereas you can’t get some of these other sprays i was telling you about and people have been on these for decades have not had many side effects at all so much safer than the other drugs
Which basically are just taking steroids so now the bonus tip now the reason why it’s a bonus tip it’s not really a nasal spray i’m telling you about it’s about something called flixinase nasals i’ll leave another picture of it up there now this is sort of like flutic some protein it’s slightly different and what you get is a little ampoule of this stuff for like
A little canister and you pour this into your nose i see an awful lot of people sort of doing this where they pour it up their nose like this and it goes down the back of their nose and goes straight into their throat doing that is never going to work because again you know it needs to stay in your nose for as long as possible if you’re going to use a very strong
Drug such as afflicting those nasals you need to stay in your nose for as long as possible so what you’re meant to do is get into your get into a muslim prayer position it’s called what you need to do is turn your head straight upside down right around so your nose is the nostrils are pointing up towards the ceiling it’s quite hard to do and then you pour the
Stuff into your nose with your nose straight upside down and then you fill up your nose and hold it in your nose for as long as possible 30 seconds few minutes if you can tolerate it the longer that stuff stays in your nose the better it’ll work if you just do this you’ll notice it’ll just go straight into your throat and it’s gone it’s pointless if you do that
And and you’re probably getting the side effects of taking steroids as well keep it in your nose for as long as you possibly can i hope you found those tips useful if you use those tips i think you’ll find these sprays become far more effective for you if they’re more effective hopefully you can avoid having surgery or some other intervention as always there
Are links to these medications in the description please have a look at them like i say you can get some of these off amazon and they’re far safer than some of the other drugs that are out there thank you very much for watching
Transcribed from video
How to use nasal sprays correctly – Avoid the side effects and boost effectiveness By Vik Veer – ENT Surgeon
