Gargling Salt Water Soothes a Sore Throat

This one holds up well in actual clinical trials. A randomised trial comparing a 3% salt solution against a standard treatment found statistically significant improvements in pain, swallowing difficulty, and throat swelling in the salt-water group. Separate research has found that regular gargling, including plain salt water, is associated with fewer upper respiratory infections generally, and patients who gargled with warm saline after certain throat procedures reported measurably less soreness afterward. The recommended mix, roughly a teaspoon of salt in a cup of warm water, is inexpensive, has no meaningful side effects, and is specifically recommended by health bodies including the CDC as a genuine, evidence-backed way to ease a sore throat.