Sniffle Stopper

If the common cold starts with sniffles, and if you can stop the sniffles "cold", have you got a cure for the common cold?

Probably not, but it might qualify as a pretty effective treatment. Not to mention it can't be assumed to work for everyone. But it sure is simple and cheap, if you happen to live most places in the industrialized world.

Here is the procedure, to be followed as soon as you consciously notice you have the sniffles.
1. Blow nose into tissue to give you a few minutes before you have to do it again.
2. Turn on the tap water (cold or warm, but not hot), and wash your hands. Be sure to use some sort of soap. Then rinse, of course.
3. With the water still running, make a cup from your hands, and catch some water fresh from the tap. Turn off the water flow at any point after this.
4. Keep hands over sink, and lower your nose (and nearby part of face) into the water that your cupped hands are holding.
5. Snort, GENTLY. You only want to flood your sinus passageways with tap water. You DON'T want any of it in your lungs!
6. After a couple of seconds, expel air through the nose, to clear out the water.
7. Dry your hands and face with a towel and then, to get the last bits of water out, blow your nose into a tissue.

That's all. This trick assumes that your public water supply is chlorinated, true for most of the industrialized world. If it is, you WILL be able to smell it during the snort! It will strongly remind you of the average public swimming pool. Very possibly you will feel an unpleasant stinging sensation, too. That's good; it means the chlorine is attacking bacteria and viruses all over the surfaces of your sinus passageways (simultaneously with causing the stinging). If you can withstand the stinging for almost-literally 2 seconds, then you will probably find that your sniffles will be stopped "cold". Certainly I've never needed to do this more than twice on the same day, after which, usually, weeks or more go by before I notice any more sniffles. (There are claims that a diet rich in various green vegetables helps prevent colds, too, and in the interest of full disclosure of anti-cold factors, I confess to usually pigging out on veggies on a snort-day.)

In closing I should mention that I thought this up and tried it out years before I discovered that there is a gadget on the market designed for water-snorting. If I recall right, though, you weren't expected to use ordinary chlorinated tap water with it; the maker was trying to sell some sort of medication, too, so highly purified water was likely required. I count them as 3 unnecessary expenses.