To our credit, we can usually suck it up and slog our way through crises personal and financial. It's often the small burdens that make us crazy. Here's help for one of them: sinus infection, aka sinusitis. Since it comes from Harvard Women's Health Watch, one of the regular subscription consumer newsletters from no less an authority than Harvard Medical School, this advice for what to do about your irritated and irritating sinuses is authoritative. As a bonus, it's also free.

The first bit of advice startled me: a nasal wash. Just a moment ago, nasal washing was a New Age kind of recommendation, not at all Western medicine, and definitely not Harvard Medical School. Running warm salt water through your nose with a neti pot may be a thousand-year old practice from Ayurvedic medicine, but when I first heard of it many years ago, the idea seemed, well, gross. Yet using a neti pot, I learned, is easy and really not gross. You'll just have to trust me on that. Or try it yourself. (It can a bit dribbly if you're not careful.)

The useful and detailed article goes into that, and many other things--what sinusitis is, why it happens, how to cure it, and--with the help of a neti pot--how to prevent it. How times change.