damien said:vibrocil [containing phenylephrine / dimetindene maleate]
Hmm... honestly, phenylephrine is a pretty heavy-duty vasoconstrictor, and I'm always a little wary about putting too much of that stuff up my nose... but hey, everyone's different. My personal rule of thumb is just to keep the chemicals to a minimum whenever possible!
I think someone else mentioned this earlier, but in my experience, just sticking to a basic saline spray or something like AquaClear is usually the way to go.
There’s also this super important thing about how you actually apply nasal drops—something doctors almost never bother explaining or people tend to overlook.
If you just rush through it like this...
- lie down and tilt your head back—maybe over the edge of the bed if that helps.
- turn your head to one side, say the right side (about a 45° angle), and while holding that position, get that dose deep into the right nostril.
- just hang out in that position for a minute or two.
- then just do the exact same thing on the other side.
The whole idea is to let those drops really soak into the mucous membrane inside the nasal cavity, which won't happen if you don't do it right or if you don't give them enough time to actually absorb.
A dead giveaway that you didn't do it correctly is when you get that bitter taste hitting the back of your throat; that basically means all those precious drops just rolled straight down your nose instead of doing their job where they belong.
Also, something else that makes a huge difference for your breathing is the air quality in whatever room you're hanging out in. If the air is bone-dry, your nose is going to struggle even more to do its job of warming and humidifying the air, which just adds more misery to the mix.