Sina Zarrintan devised what he calls "a unique treatment" for adult men who have nasal congestion. It's a do-it-yourself form of treatment, no doctors or equipment needed. If your nose is stuffed up, and you want to unstuff it, and if you're a man, ejaculate.

Zarrintan, who is based at Tabriz Medical University in Iran, wrote a study called Ejaculation as a Potential Treatment of Nasal Congestion in Mature Males, which he published recently in the journal Medical Hypotheses. The study does not say whether there is a related or parallel treatment for women.

This is, at least officially, an unusual approach to the ailment.

Medicine does not lack, either in variety or quantity, for studies about how to attack nasal congestion. Here are three of the more typical titles you can find in a quick wander through a medical library: Clinical Comparison of Oxymetazoline and Ephedrine in Nasal Decongestion; The Determination of the Optimal Oral Dose of Pseudoephedrine for Nasal Decongestion Using Nasal Histamine Challenge and Anterior Rhinometry; Nasal Decongestion With Imidazoline Derivatives: Acoustic Rhinometry Measurements.

Drugs figure prominently in the war against clogged, pressured nasal passages, but doctors have thrown lots of other things at the problem: elbow grease, water and catalogues full of machinery, unguents and irritants. A German medical journal recently featured a lively article called From Nasal Irrigation to Horseradish Poultice: Prescriptions for Nasal Congestion.

None of these offers the simplicity - one might, under other circumstances, even say the purity - of the Zarrintan approach.

Zarrintan begins by defining the problem: "Nasal congestion is defined by the blockage of the nasal passages, usually due to membranes lining the nose becoming swollen from inflamed blood vessels." Then he tells why, on the deepest level, the problem is a problem: "It impairs the natural human drive for nasal breathing and leads to lower self-esteem and to impaired quality of life."

Decongestant drugs, he laments, have their drawbacks. They "act by stimulating alpha-adrenergic sympathetic nervous system. This leads to vasoconstriction of the nasal blood vessels and subsequent alleviation of the symptoms. However, oral or topical use of decongestants can have adverse effects of sympathetic stimulation such as hypertension. Furthermore, if used for more than two or three days, they can actually make congestion worse."

Ejaculation offers cheerier prospects, bringing in its wake a happy host of physiological effects throughout the congested male sufferer's entire body. Zarrintan explains that "its emission phase provides a sympathetic stimulation and subsequent vasoconstriction and nasal decongestion. Also, the refractory period serves as a sympathetic reservoir and maintains the decongestive state for a considerable while."

The advantages, he says, are clear. First, "this method does not wish to have the adverse effects of pharmaceutical decongestants because it is a physiologic stimulation of the sympathetic system in the body". And maybe best of all: "It can be done time-to-time to alleviate the congestion and the patient can adjust the number of intercourses or masturbations depending on the severity of the symptoms."

· Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize