(ABC4 NEWS – SALT LAKE CITY, UT) When it comes to COVID 19 hygiene, you know you’re supposed to wash your hands. But have you thought about washing your nose?

Social distancing and masks are something that a lot of people are using to help stop the spread of COVID 19. I went to visit a Utah-based hygiene company to learn more about what they are doing.

The Xlear products, spelled X-L-E-A-R and pronounced “clear” are all about the upper airway.

Nate Jones is the founder and president of Xlear. I asked him what he knows about the virus that causes COVID.  He showed me a number of studies and said, “The virus lives in the upper airway. That’s the dominate site. We’ve known that since March when they put an article in the New England Journal of Medicine. where, they showed that roughly 90 percent of the virus load is in your nose. Which means that if you have a thousand viruses 900 of them are living in your nose.”  That surely paints an interesting picture.

The University of Connecticut School of Medicine has found that something called “viral inactivation” may not only help prevent person-to-person spread of COVID, but may also diminish the severity of disease in patients by decreasing the viral load delivered to the lungs.

To be clear SARS CoV2 is the virus that causes the disease called COVID-19. We know now that the virus invades through the upper airways (#1 nose and #2 mouth). So how do you cause “viral inactivation”?

Jones explained; “If you have something that is deactivating the virus, destroying the virus, which there are ingredients in our nasal spray we’ve been using for 20 years that we just found out, do that. Those studies were done at Utah State University and the University of Geneva.”

Please note that I’m not a doctor and I don’t play one on television, but let’s see what we’ve got so far from people that are doctors and researchers for real. The SARS CoV2 virus that causes COVID-19 is brought into your body through the upper airways. It seems that you can reduce the amount of viruses/viral load by deactivating the virus. If you reduce the viral load, you might make it so that people don’t spread the disease as much and, if you do get sick, you might not be as sick. Researchers have apparently confirmed that there is something that does this “deactivation.”

The University of Tennessee Health Science Center report that something as simple as using anti-viral nasal sprays slow down disease progression and transmission.

Jones put it this way; “The analogy that I use is this wasp nest above your child’s playground. If you have a wasp nest above your playground you don’t sit there and wait for the government to get rid of all the wasps in the world. You don’t sit there with a fly swatter as they sting your kids. You go spray the wasp nest.”

Could it be that simple? Remember you heard it here first: “A few sprays a day may keep the doctor away.”

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I strongly feel that “stories have power”. Chances are that if you are going through something, that someone else probably has as well. The shared experiences we humans have can help each other. That my friend makes the point that stories “help us understand each other.”

You don’t have to agree with everyone, but in my opinion, if people would take more time getting to knowing more about others and where they are coming from, we just might find out that we have more similarities than differences.

A big shout out goes to my collaborator, Ed Wilets, who does a great job as my videographer/editor for all my stories. Your feedback is always welcome at DJessop@abc4.com

Thank you for watching, reading, liking, subscribing and all that other fun stuff. I’m Doug Jessop, ABC4 News.

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