Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstop from house Stuff works dot com where
Speaker 1: smart Happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question, can
Speaker 1: nasal sprays be addictive? It's pretty scary to think that
Speaker 1: you're addicted to any drug, especially when available at a
Speaker 1: grocery store. Oprah Winfrey even devoted an entire show to
Speaker 1: people who can't live without their decongested spray. But fortunately
Speaker 1: it's safe to say that you're not really addicted if
Speaker 1: you think you're addicted to these sprays. Doctors and scientists
Speaker 1: define addiction in different ways. Scientists call drugs addictive if
Speaker 1: they stimulate the pleasure center in your brain. Psychiatrists, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, say something is addictive if your need
Speaker 1: for it makes you do illegal, harmful things to get it.
Speaker 1: Nasal sprays don't do either of these things. They have
Speaker 1: no effect on the brain, and while you may need
Speaker 1: your medicine to breathe freely, you probably aren't going to
Speaker 1: hold up a bank or skip work to go buy
Speaker 1: some nasal Sprayser drops are sold over the counter under
Speaker 1: brand names like Afrin, Sinex, Neo, sinephron, Alarrest, Durhamist, and
Speaker 1: sine Arrest. They contain a medicine that constricts the blood
Speaker 1: vessels inside your nose. When you have a cold, the
Speaker 1: flu or allergies, these blood vessels becomes swollen and dilated.
Speaker 1: This stimulates the nasal membranes to produce large amounts of mucus,
Speaker 1: like stepping on a garden hose. Constricting the blood vessels
Speaker 1: reduces the blood flow to your nostrils. The swollen vessels shrink,
Speaker 1: and this helps drive things up. Unfortunately, your nose can
Speaker 1: become tolerant to decongested effects if you use it for
Speaker 1: too long. Tolerance in general happens because your body launches
Speaker 1: a biological counter attack against the effects of the drug.
Speaker 1: One way it does this is by increasing cellular process
Speaker 1: and other activities that produce the opposite effect. In the
Speaker 1: case of decongestents, the body tries to dilate the nasal
Speaker 1: blood vessels despite the drug. This cancels out the decongestents effect,
Speaker 1: and the same squeeze of the bottle that brought you
Speaker 1: relief before no longer helps. You end up using more
Speaker 1: and more to get rid of your stuff. He knows,
Speaker 1: and each time you sniff more decongestent, your body redoubles
Speaker 1: its efforts against the resulting constriction. This vicious cycle continues
Speaker 1: until you can't exist without a bottle of nasal spray
Speaker 1: in hand. If you don't use it, you're stuffed up
Speaker 1: and miserable. This is called rebound congestion. With lots of
Speaker 1: medicine on board, your nasal passages are dry and you
Speaker 1: feel healthy. With the medicine gun, the physiological effects that
Speaker 1: your body has made rain unchecked. What happens is the
Speaker 1: exact opposite of the drug's effect. Your blood vessels swell
Speaker 1: up again, and your nasal lie fills up with mucus
Speaker 1: and your running nose returns. This is why the package
Speaker 1: labeling for these drugs tells you to limit their use
Speaker 1: to three days in a row. If you don't build
Speaker 1: up tolerance to the decongested effects, you won't get rebound congestion.
Speaker 1: And if you are tolerant, don't worry. It's not permanent.
Speaker 1: If you quit cold Turkey, the changes that your body
Speaker 1: has made will eventually be reversed in a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks to a month. In the meantime, your doctor may
Speaker 1: be able to give you a prescription drug to safely
Speaker 1: combat your congestion. For more on this and thousands of
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