Anya Sostek describes one old-fashioned treatment for nasal congestion:
It’s called high volume nasal saline irrigation, and it’s sold in squeeze bottles at drugstores or big box stores. A patient or a parent holds the rinse bottle up to one nostril and gently squeezes the saline liquid, which will fill that nostril, go around the septum and come out the other side of the nose — flushing out mucus and bacteria along the way.
“I think they’re fantastic,” said Farrel Buchinsky, a pediatric otolaryngologist at Allegheny General Hospital and a professor at Drexel University College of Medicine. “While they might sound gross, from the perspective of getting rid of secretions, bacteria and thick mucus, nothing could be better.”
Read article from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Information about how to do nasal irrigation properly is here from the University of Wisconsin, the FDA, and from National Jewish Health.