{"id":225044,"date":"2026-01-09T13:30:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T13:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/225044\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T13:30:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T13:30:07","slug":"woman-reveals-addiction-to-popular-cold-remedy-as-experts-urge-seven-day-limit-on-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/225044\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman reveals addiction to popular cold remedy as experts urge seven-day limit on use"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">A woman has revealed she has been battling a 23-year addiction to nasal sprays, as new research reveals the risk of using the sprays long-term.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Charlotte Johnstone, 30, appeared on Good Morning Britain on Thursday (8 January), where she opened up about her addiction which first began when she was a little girl.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cIt&#8217;s such a fresh feeling and then I got addicted to that feeling of it and now I&#8217;ve got this rebound congestion,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Rebound congestion, or rhinitis medicamentosa, is worsening nasal stuffiness caused by the overuse of decongestant nasal sprays.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">It comes as new research by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/topic\/royal-pharmaceutical-society\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Royal Pharmaceutical Society;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Royal Pharmaceutical Society<\/a> (RPS) revealed that nearly 60 per cent of people are unaware that these sprays shouldn&#8217;t be used for more than seven days or it could lead to dependency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman has revealed she has been battling a 23-year addiction to nasal sprays, as new research reveals&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[579,134575,134577,71396,134,524,133778,134576,111,139,69,133751,133750],"class_list":["post-225044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-addiction","tag-charlotte-johnstone","tag-fresh-feeling","tag-good-morning-britain","tag-health","tag-medication","tag-nasal-sprays","tag-nasal-stuffiness","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-rebound-congestion","tag-royal-pharmaceutical-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}