Overhyped: “Saline nasal rinses help you get over a cold faster.”

Overhyped

Evidence confidence Limited

The short answer

Salt water in the nose has not been shown to help colds end sooner; two early trials from one team reported faster recovery, but neither used a placebo.

What this means for you

Rinsing your nose with salt water is cheap and low risk, and it may ease a stuffy nose a little, but it is not a proven way to get over a cold faster. If you try it, the water you use matters for safety.

Your next step

If you try a nasal rinse for a cold, start in the first day or two of symptoms and make the salt water with distilled, sterile or boiled and cooled water.

Who should be careful?

Safety note: Never use tap water straight from the faucet in a nasal rinse. The FDA says to use distilled or sterile water, tap water boiled for 3 to 5 minutes and cooled to lukewarm, or water passed through a filter designed to trap germs. Tap water can contain organisms, including amoebas, that may be safe to swallow but can survive in the nose and cause serious infections, which in rare cases are fatal. Wash the device and let it dry after each use. Very young children may not tolerate rinsing.

Talk to a healthcare professional if: you have a weakened immune system and want to start nasal rinsing, you want to rinse a young child's nose, or you get a fever, nosebleeds or headaches while rinsing.

Why this confidence?

Only two trials, both from one research team, found colds ended sooner with salt water in the nose; families knew which group they were in and rated their own symptoms, and the children's trial has not been published in a journal. Older, small trials mostly found little difference and none used a placebo, so confidence is Limited.

The facts

Salt water in the nose has not been shown to help colds end sooner; two early trials from one team reported faster recovery, but neither used a placebo. In a 2019 pilot trial of 66 adults in Edinburgh, rinsing the nose and gargling with homemade salt water, started within 2 days of the first symptoms, shortened colds by 1.9 days and cut use of cold medicines by 36%. In a larger trial of 407 children under 7, parents put salt water drops in the child's nose; the children were ill for a median of 6 days, compared with 8 days with usual care.

The bigger picture

A 2015 Cochrane review of five small trials, with 544 children and 205 adults, found that most results showed no difference between salt water and usual care or other nose sprays. One larger trial in children found slightly less runny and stuffy nose with salt water, a difference the reviewers said may be too small to matter, and less use of decongestants. None of these trials compared salt water with a placebo, and in the two recent trials, families knew what they were using. The children's trial results come from the team's February 2025 report to its government funder and a conference talk. The paper had been submitted, but no published paper could be found as of October 2026, and the report gives results for 294 of the 407 children who joined. In a trial of 576 adults with COVID-19 in Pakistan, the same rinse-and-gargle method did not speed recovery.

Sources (5)

“Saline nasal rinses help you get over a cold faster.”

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