Ok, here is the summary of my 20+ years of experience with allergies, neti pots, nasal rinses, nasal surgery and everything else:
I am a life long hay-fever sufferer, and my allergies exploded after I returned from the first Desert Storm war. The next year in Korea I remember being on duty sitting at a desk and going through an entire box of Kleenex in about an hour. When neti pots first starting gaining traction in popular consciousness in the early 2000s, I began using them, and even though they stung like crazy, they did offer some relief. After years of using them, I've switched to irrigating my sinuses with a slightly different device called a NeilMed rinse bottle.
This plastic squeeze bottle does the same job as a neti pot, but I prefer it because I can control the amount and pressure of water going in through how hard I squeeze the bottle, and also because it has a lid and is more sanitary. NeilMed is also cheaper than a neti pot-- they are less than $10 on Amazon (USA) or even better, virtually every allergist and ear-nose-throat doctor in the world will have a cabinet full of them to give away as samples. So the cost is zero to minimal, especially if you mix your own solution. The doctor-approved recipe is right here:
https://www.aaaai.org/tools-for-the-public/conditions-library/allergies/saline-sinus-rinse-recipe
So frequent nasal rinses helped me quite a bit until finally at age 52, a surgeon removed most of my turbinate sinuses and straightened out my septum. This helped the most-- for the first time in my life I can breathe through my nose. It isn't all roses, though. The inside of my nose is now a dry, scarred up place, and where the area used to be a twisty maze of passages that would let nothing through, it now seems to be just a sloping drainpipe that goes in a straight shot from my nose to the back of my throat. It's terrible when I cough or accidentally inhale water, but I don't mind too much-- it is such a glorious luxury to be able to breathe through my nose.
So that's my experience with neti pots and other nasal rinses as a severe sufferer for more than 20 years. Let me know if you have any questions and I'll try to answer.
