During the winter in cold climates the air is usually quite dry, and this results in many people having dry nasal passages leading to itching, burning, and mucus crusts forming.
These complaints increase when the humidity is low in the winter months from December to May in the northern part of the world and during long journeys by airplane.
The traditional medical treatment is a spray of isotonic sodium chloride, or saline, solution. A new study compared saline with sesame oil.
Swedish researchers used the sesame oil spray with great benefits on nasal dryness, stuffiness and crusts apparent within 4 days. After 14 days of treatment 80% of the subjects were improved. The sesame oil was far superior to the saline spray which only worked in 30% of the subjects.
Archives of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery November 2001 127:1353-1356
The sesame oil in this study was pharmaceutical grade and its bottle had a dosage pump. As long as you are not allergic to sesame it is likely that a high quality organic sesame oil would also work.
It might not hurt to wipe a small drop of sesame oil inside the nose, but it probably needs to get higher up, and spraying with something other than a dosage pump could result in getting oil into your lungs.
However, even though it would be wise to avoid getting the sesame oil in your lungs, the authors showed that the ciliary function of the lungs were not changed after exposure to the sesame oil and it is likely the cilia in the lining of the lung would be able to remove the excess oil.
If you are allergic to sesame oil you should likely avoid this approach, however, in the study those allergic to sesame seemed to tolerate the small doses used, which is likely related to the fact that a pure pharmaceutical grade sesame oil was used which was free of antigenic proteins.
It is possible that the sesame oil works but it seems to inhibit the production locally of arachidonic acid which is a fat that lead to the formation of many of the proinflammatory prostaglandins.