The Nasal Rinse I Mix When My Throat Starts Going Weird

I'm not sick yet. That's the whole point of this one.

There's a window, maybe half a day, where my throat feels slightly off. Not sore. Just lined, like something is sitting on it. Sometimes it shows up as a mild headache instead, or I start sneezing at 4pm for no reason. That's when I mix this.

The reference point is a SAGE paper in the Ear, Nose & Throat Journal from the COVID years. They put povidone-iodine against SARS-CoV-2 in vitro, and 0.5% wiped it out after 60 seconds of contact. They cite 0.4% to 0.5% as the range people actually put in their noses. So that's where I sit.

In vitro means in a dish. Not in a person, not in my nose, not on a Tuesday when I've slept badly. I'm not telling you this prevents anything. I'm telling you what I mix and when.

I spent years in a juice concentrate factory and then at GE doing industrial water chemistry, so diluting something by a factor of twenty is the one part of this I'm genuinely qualified for. Here it is.

The rinse: 250ml bottle, 0.5%

Component	Amount
10% povidone-iodine concentrate	12.5 ml
Boiled water, cooled	237.5 ml
Non-iodized salt	~2.1 g (about ⅓ tsp)

That gives you 250 ml at 0.5% povidone-iodine, roughly isotonic saline.

The math, in case you want a different bottle

10% × V1 = 0.5% × 250 ml
V1 = 12.5 ml of concentrate

Everything else is water: 250 minus 12.5 leaves 237.5 ml. Salt goes in at 0.9% of that water portion, which lands on about 2.1 g.

I weigh the salt instead of spooning it. A teaspoon of fine table salt and a teaspoon of damp Celtic salt are not the same mass, and the gap is big enough to notice. If you want a bigger batch of the salted water and you're only filling one 250ml bottle, that's fine. Salinity doesn't change when you pour a portion out. Just measure 237.5 ml into the bottle and add your 12.5 ml on top.

Method

1. Boil the water, let it come back down to room temperature. Don't add iodine to hot water.
2. Measure 237.5 ml into the bottle.
3. Dissolve the salt properly. Shake until it runs clear.
4. Add the 12.5 ml of concentrate.
5. Shake gently. You want light amber, roughly weak tea. If it comes out dark, your ratio is off. Tip it out and start again instead of correcting by eye.
6. Mix it fresh. Diluted povidone-iodine isn't stable enough to sit around, so I don't keep a stockpile.

I run it through one nostril and let it come out the other, holding about 60 seconds of contact because that's the exposure window from the paper. Nose and throat only. Don't swallow it.

The rest of what I do

The rinse doesn't travel alone. Same trigger, same half-day window, all at once:

3% peroxide in the ear canals. Poured in, one side at a time, left to fizz. It's loud in your head and then it stops.

A glass of water with:

• 3 drops oregano oil
• 1 drop clove oil
• ½ tsp vitamin C
• ¼ tsp NAC

That's the whole stack. Nose, ears, throat, in one pass, on the day the signal shows up rather than three days later when I'm already down.

Is it the iodine doing the work, or the oregano oil, or the vitamin C, or the fact that noticing early makes me sleep more and train less that week? I have no idea. I'm running four things at once, which is terrible experimental design and I know it. I'm not going to pretend otherwise so the story sounds cleaner.

When I don't do this

This is an occasional thing, not a habit. Iodine gets absorbed through the tissue in your nose, and I'm not interested in finding out what daily exposure does to my thyroid over a decade.

I'd skip the iodine part entirely if any of these applied to me:

• Iodine allergy
• Any thyroid condition, or thyroid medication
• Pregnancy or breastfeeding, without asking someone qualified first

And I stop if there's real burning, ongoing irritation, or a nosebleed. A mild sting that fades is normal. Anything past that isn't worth pushing through.

I'm a chemist, not a doctor. This is a description of my own routine drawn off one in-vitro study, not medical advice, and not a protocol anyone handed me.