It’s like a little tea pot that you fill up with a saline solution and stick in your nose. This, my friends, is the neti pot.

If you’ve never heard of it before then you must not watch Oprah. For the record, I don’t watch Oprah, but heard about this wonderful instrument from someone that does. The neti pot is something that I absolutely swear by for relief from allergies and nasal congestion.

It works by adding a bit of salt and some warm water, tilting your head, and pouring the solution into one nostril. The result is the water flowing through your nasal cavity and out the other nostril. Then you switch nostrils and repeat. The whole process flushes out lots of stuff from your nose and clears you right up. In allergy season, the neti pot helps to flush out allergens before they have a chance to build up and disrupt your otherwise peaceful existence.

I swear by the neti pot because it works, but it takes a lot of work. During the winter months I use the neti pot at least once a day. I find this helps fight off colds. If I get a cold, I’ll use it twice a day or more because it’s great at flushing out congestion. Sounds awesome, eh? During allergy season I use the neti pot twice a day, in the morning and at night, and the results have been incredible. While in University, I used to get allergy shots because my allergies were pretty bad. Since I started using the neti pot—for the past two summers—I haven’t got shots and haven’t had a lot of problems with my allergies either. The neti pot flushes everything out.

I know it’s weird and kind of gross, but it’s something that I swear by. The neti pot works as long as you’re willing to commit to it; it’s not a one-off solution you have to stick with it. If you do get a neti pot there are a slew of helpful videos on YouTube to guide you through the process. You could also take a look at them if you’re curious to see what kind of weirdos use this thing.

In this new series Things I Swear By, I want to take a little look at some of the things that I swear by.

The rationale is this: we all have things in our lives that we depend upon, that we swear by. These are things: products, goods, services, routines, rituals, etc. that we’ve picked up somewhere along the way. They’ve become important to us, essential to us, and something that we couldn’t do without. I think we all have these things—we hear about them, or start doing them or using them, at the suggestion of a friend, a relative or a colleague… and they work. I thought it’d be fun to share a few of the things that I swear by, and maybe you can suggest some too.

Ricola

I first heard about Ricola from my wife, Maria, who knew about these wonderful cough drops from her aunt, a musician. Ricola are incredible. If you know nothing about them you might, at least, recall this commercial from the 90′s which featured two Swiss men alternately yelling, “Riiiiiiiicola!” and blowing into some kind of enormous horn. Does that ring any bells?

Ricola are cough drops made from all natural ingredients, some kind of mix of herbs found in the Swiss mountains, I gather, and they work great. As a teacher, I’m talking a lot so when I’m sick and have a sore throat it’s an absolute pain to try and teach. But Ricola are soothing and wonderful, and they taste good too. I personally can’t stand the menthol taste of Halls or the other alternatives but something like Ricola, which tastes pretty good and seems to be natural too, is really agreeable.

Out of all the stuff I’ve used for coughs and sore throats, Ricola is hands down the best. They’re natural. They taste good. And they work, tried and tested by musicians and teaches alike Ricola is something that I swear by.