when you were doing the show about 50 questions in an hour last week, I found something to be a little off in what you were saying. You were talking about salt water and gargling. I also do that. I assumed it was because a salty environment is not the condition that such bacteria could survive in, although you gave a different reason. As far as using a netty pot goes for adding salt to your sinus passages, I believe that you imply that a salty environment would be favorable and healthy. In reality, a netty pot is used for rinsing out irritants such as allergans and bacteria (microbes). If you are using a netty pot, you should be using an isotonic solution-- one that matches the salinity of your body, whereas gargling with salt water is a hypertonic solution that will kill microbes, or as you say, reduce swelling, because it draws out fluid. Plain water is a hypotonic solution, and would not work, because it would cause water to flow into the cells, and cause them to swell (although it could also have some rinsing capacity as well). The point of a netty pot  is not the same as gargling. With gargling hypertonicity is important because it affects the celld is helping to aleviate the pain caused by microbes. Netty pots are used to rinse sinuses of irritants. Using either a hyper or hypo tonic solution will hurt the same way pool water or sea salt water would if you got it up your nose when you were swimming. Not a great solution if you are trying to soothe and rinse out allergans. The netty pot comes with salt and a formula to make it isotonic; however you description of what one should do is misleading. I would be afraid that people will put salt water up their nose and hurt themselves, and poorly affect their sinuses. You may want to think about clarifying this assertion on one of your shows.