I looked up a few search terms on halotherapy, as this method is called traditionally (when people were treated by sitting in underground salt chambers), to see what the evidence behind it might be. (Testimonials are fine, but they're not evidence...you don't know how the company has filtered the comments, nor how the device would compare against placebo. There are no clinical trials I can find on this specific kind of a device.)
What I
could find on halotherapy/salt treatment in general:
The latest (and most reputably-sourced) study that reviews the evidence for halotherapy is from the journal
Allergy in 2006.
Salt chamber treatment reduced bronchial hyperresponsiveness as an add-on therapy in asthmatics with a low to moderate dose of inhaled steroids. The possibility that salt chamber treatment could serve as a complementary therapy to conventional medication cannot be excluded.
The neat thing is that this helped patients whose existing medications were not doing enough to reduce their sensitivity to attacks. In other words, it
reduced histamine responsiveness (this is a very good thing).
No statistically significant difference in reported symptoms showed up over the two weeks of treatment.
Stopping treatment with halotherapy returned patients to baseline in followup exams. (This is good -- it shows that the salt chamber treatment rather than random improvement was responsible for the effect.)
But, it's a small trial (n = 29) and replicated the conditions of the salt chamber spas, which this device may or may not do.
In line with Raven1's experience, there's another possible benefit: halotherapy could help you
clear out the crap. One well-done trial showed
nebulized saline can help COPD symptoms.
Patients reported a 4% improvement in mean breathlessness score following placebo (Wilcoxon test; p = 0.37) compared with 23% improvement following active nebulized saline (p = 0.0001). 65% of patients given active nebulized saline but only 5% of the placebo group reported that mucus expectoration was easier after the treatment.
The idea behind halotherapy is similar -- giving you dry sodium chloride micro-sized particulate instead of a nebulized solution, but delivering salt to the lungs and airway in any case.
So
if the device offers enough delivery for effective "dosage" of salt, this might help clear things out, and it looks like a very interesting concept. It's not expensive and there's no potential drug interactions. I'm curious to hear what people think of its effectiveness.
(Note: I did leave a good handful of older studies out, for a reason. Sellers may cite these, but the Eastern European trials for halotherapy have generally poor methodology. For instance, in the most recent Russian trial I could find from the 1990s, the patient groups are
not controlled or monitored for other medication use, dosages, and changes in these outside factors during the halotherapy trials. That's a huge confounder. A critique of one of these trials explains it in the
Journal of Aerosol Medicine [they have journals for everything!].)
(Usual disclaimer: I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. Disclosure of personal bias: After living in Russia, I'm always skeptical of anything they call a "treatment", because their idea of traditional remedies can range from the plausible to the silly to the downright sadistic.)
I know you can preserve meat by salting it!
