As the developer of this spray let me lend a voice to how it works. It’s marketed as a nose wash because the FDA has no interest in hygiene—thanks to the soap industry back when the FDA was started not wanting anything to do with drugs.
At the same time I like to think of Hippocrates, the father of western medicine, telling us that our fo…
As the developer of this spray let me lend a voice to how it works. It’s marketed as a nose wash because the FDA has no interest in hygiene—thanks to the soap industry back when the FDA was started not wanting anything to do with drugs.
At the same time I like to think of Hippocrates, the father of western medicine, telling us that our foods should be our drugs. I call foods like xylitol “Hippocratic Drugs”.
There are two ways xylitol works in the nose: it optimizes our normal nasal washing, and; it interferes with microbial adherence. Many call it a nose wash, but that’s misleading. The combination of mucus, which holds on to all the garbage—including microbes, and the microscopic hairs—called cilia—that sweep it all out, are what make up our primary nasal defenses.
We developed this defense when we grew up in the tropics, where the humidity is normally higher than 50%, and when it’s that high respiratory infections are far less—one of the reasons Africa has had less problems with COVID. But we moved to temperate zones, and indoors where we could warm the air and be comfortable. But warming the air reduces the humidity and in our comfortable homes the optimal humidity is usually seen as in the 30% range—which handicaps the defense. A crippled defense means people get sick. Xylitol works osmotically to pull water into the nose so the optimal level is restored. It doesn’t wash your nose; it helps the nose wash itself. And a clean nose, as many of you who are users witness, means less respiratory illness, both infectious and allergenic—and that includes asthma.
The interference with how microbes hold on is important. Long ago Bill Costerton, who is know as the father of slime due to his interest in the microbial families at the bottom of stream beds, showed us that all natural microbes, both bacteria and viruses, are normally covered with a network of sugars and sugar complexes—they’re called glycans—and one fo the things they do is provide a means for the microbe to dock on the glycans of the host. Costerton wrote in a 1977 issue of Scientific American that the sugars provided several ways to cope with the infection—and he was right—and xylitol is a flexible sugar/glycan-like that can look like many of those target glycans.
The important thing to remember is that xylitol doesn’t kill microbes; it negotiates—it says, ‘shape up or ship out.’ When we threaten microbes we push them to mutate more often to deal with the threat, so they learn to resist—and now we have many die from antimicrobial resistant organisms. Negotiating pushes them in the other direction; it’s called commensalism, it’s where the microbe learns to live with us in a helpful way.
So why haven’t we followed this path?
Because there’s no money in it. When I found out how nit picking the FDA was and realized I did not have pharmaceutical grade funding to jump through their hoops I called the pharmaceutical industry. Their initial interest evaporated when they found that they could not patent the active substance since it was a food. It costs over a million dollars to jump through the FDA hoops and they need a secure profit so they can price it high enough to recoup the expense. With a food people would mix it up in their kitchens if it was priced as a drug.
As the developer of this spray let me lend a voice to how it works. It’s marketed as a nose wash because the FDA has no interest in hygiene—thanks to the soap industry back when the FDA was started not wanting anything to do with drugs.
At the same time I like to think of Hippocrates, the father of western medicine, telling us that our foods should be our drugs. I call foods like xylitol “Hippocratic Drugs”.
There are two ways xylitol works in the nose: it optimizes our normal nasal washing, and; it interferes with microbial adherence. Many call it a nose wash, but that’s misleading. The combination of mucus, which holds on to all the garbage—including microbes, and the microscopic hairs—called cilia—that sweep it all out, are what make up our primary nasal defenses.
We developed this defense when we grew up in the tropics, where the humidity is normally higher than 50%, and when it’s that high respiratory infections are far less—one of the reasons Africa has had less problems with COVID. But we moved to temperate zones, and indoors where we could warm the air and be comfortable. But warming the air reduces the humidity and in our comfortable homes the optimal humidity is usually seen as in the 30% range—which handicaps the defense. A crippled defense means people get sick. Xylitol works osmotically to pull water into the nose so the optimal level is restored. It doesn’t wash your nose; it helps the nose wash itself. And a clean nose, as many of you who are users witness, means less respiratory illness, both infectious and allergenic—and that includes asthma.
The interference with how microbes hold on is important. Long ago Bill Costerton, who is know as the father of slime due to his interest in the microbial families at the bottom of stream beds, showed us that all natural microbes, both bacteria and viruses, are normally covered with a network of sugars and sugar complexes—they’re called glycans—and one fo the things they do is provide a means for the microbe to dock on the glycans of the host. Costerton wrote in a 1977 issue of Scientific American that the sugars provided several ways to cope with the infection—and he was right—and xylitol is a flexible sugar/glycan-like that can look like many of those target glycans.
The important thing to remember is that xylitol doesn’t kill microbes; it negotiates—it says, ‘shape up or ship out.’ When we threaten microbes we push them to mutate more often to deal with the threat, so they learn to resist—and now we have many die from antimicrobial resistant organisms. Negotiating pushes them in the other direction; it’s called commensalism, it’s where the microbe learns to live with us in a helpful way.
So why haven’t we followed this path?
Because there’s no money in it. When I found out how nit picking the FDA was and realized I did not have pharmaceutical grade funding to jump through their hoops I called the pharmaceutical industry. Their initial interest evaporated when they found that they could not patent the active substance since it was a food. It costs over a million dollars to jump through the FDA hoops and they need a secure profit so they can price it high enough to recoup the expense. With a food people would mix it up in their kitchens if it was priced as a drug.
I would like to give you 100❤️ for this.
My back neck hair tingled while reading!