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My guess would be that the hypertonicity of the salt water causes water to move out of your nose's tissues through osmosis, reducing swelling, while the water clears out the mucus and stuff clogging it up.
Isotonic is what you're shooting for. Hyper- or hypotonic will cause discomfort. You can buy saline packets from any pharmacy, mix those with a specified amount of distilled water and you'll have the correct concentration with minimal extra bits (which you'll get a lot of with tap water... don't use tap water).
Done correctly and applied at roughly the same temp as your body, you'll barely feel it in your sinuses.
Isotonic is good for routine use, but hypertonic doesn't burn that bad if you're really congested. I've used 2 neilmed packets before in my 8 oz water when I had viral nasal infection (as the instructions suggest) and didn't experience burning. However if I'm not congested like this, hypertonic will burn.