How to Know if Gargling With Salt Water Is Working

Friends, colleagues, family members and even doctors tell you to gargle with salt water for laryngitis or hoarseness. As a result, you may postpone more appropriate treatment, assuming that the salt water is working. To know if gargling with salt water is truly an effective treatment, you'll need to know the underlying condition, pay attention to signs and symptoms, and use a process of elimination.

Instructions

• 1

  Understand your ailment. Know what condition you're treating with the saltwater gargle. For instance, don't assume that you have laryngitis; get a proper diagnosis. Salt water might be helpful for laryngitis but irritate an abscessed tooth. Ask a medical professional what improvements you can expect from the saltwater gargle so you'll have clear indicators about whether it's helping. For example, the gargle might be expected to decrease pain and soreness but not assist with redness.

• 2

  Assess your symptoms on a scale from one to ten with one being slight symptoms and ten being significant symptoms. Do this assessment before the saltwater gargle and then 30 minutes after the gargle. If the symptoms go down in number or severity, the gargle probably helped. Also, you may have multiple symptoms and checking in on each symptom before and after the gargle will tell you which ones improved and which did not.

• 3

  Go through a process of elimination. Separate the saltwater gargle from other treatments that you're using. In other words, don't pop a pain reliever, gargle, suck on ice chips and use a throat spray at the same time. If you do, you won't know which one really worked. Isolate the saltwater gargle from the other treatments by using it solely for a certain number of hours, times, days or some predetermined schedule so you can see if it's helping.

• 4

  Do some research on the effectiveness of saltwater gargles for different conditions to see if yours will be improved. According to the Mayo Clinic and the University of Chicago Medical Center, gargling with salt water can reduce sore-throat symptoms, pain, scratchiness, throat dryness and more.