Renee,
Our ds has been doing nasal rinses off and on for well over a year now. He was 5-1/2 when he started (just turned 7 this week<img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0">) He tolerates them well. I've heard that the sinus rinse mixture the other poster mentioned is good. We've never tried it, we just make the mixture following our ENT's recipe. We also don't use distilled water. We have a water filtration system and our ENT said that was sufficient. Here's our recipe: Pour 1 qt clean water into a glass jar (we use a mason canning jar), add between 1-1/2 and 3 tsps of pickling salt and 1 tsp of pure baking soda. Mix well. Pour half the mixture into a bowl for immediate use, cover the other half and save to use later (we do 1/2 in the am, 1/2 in the pm.) It's very important that you only use pickling or canning salt and not table salt because the iodine is irritating to the nose. The amount of salt used is personal preference - the higher the content the better. Our ds tolerates 2 tsps well so that's what we use. As for the procedure, our ds actually does it himself. We use a bulb syringe. He fills it with the water from the bowl and then squirts it up one nostril (being careful to aim towards the outside of the nostril vs the septum). He then blows that out, refills the syringe, does the other nostril and repeats, alternating sides, until the bowl is empty. Sometimes the water will drain down their throat, that's ok, your dd should just spit it out in the sink. Other times, it may drain down the other nostril. That's ok, too. If your dd does any nasal sprays, wait about 15 min after the rinse before using (so the nose has stopped draining). Our ds has never complained about them and he tolerates them well. My dh also has bad allergies/sinus problems so he started out doing them with ds (to help with compliance). He said they're not bad, just kind of gross because of all the gunk they dislodge. Also, I'm not sure whether your dr explained why they're helpful so I thought I'd pass that info along. The water obviously is just to flush out the mucous. The pickling salt draws water out of the nasal passages, shrinking them, thus reducing the inflammation that causes obstruction and polyps. The baking soda is a natural cleanser that "cleans" the passage (ie think of it as the soap). I hope that helps. They're actually good for anyone with chronic sinus/nasal/allergy problems, not just cfers.
One last question for anybody, do you think using dead sea salt would be more beneficial? Has anyone tried that?? Just curious...
~M