Challenges
By Dr. Rob Ivker
The body is a self-healing organism is one of healthcare’s most fundamental principles. We’re always reminded of this fact with both illness and injury. Long before you became a sinus sufferer, whenever you got a cold, no matter how severe, it was usually completely gone within a week. And if you’ve ever had the misfortune of breaking a bone or had a severe sprain, the injured part was usually placed in a cast, splinted, braced, or you used crutches, and were instructed to not use it for several weeks (6 weeks if it’s a broken weight-bearing bone). In most cases, the injury is completely healed after the recommended period of inactivity.
With chronic sinusitis, the primary physical dysfunction is an inflamed mucous membrane lining your nose and sinuses. Your body does have the capacity to heal this congested, weeping, and painful tissue, but the challenge with which you’re confronted is that you can never put it at rest. As long as you’re alive, you’re breathing about 20,000 times a day, with your nose and sinuses serving as your body’s air filter, humidifier, and temperature-regulator.
Knowing that your mucous membrane is always at work filtering, humidifying, and regulating the temperature of the air you breathe in order to protect the lungs, your next step in helping to heal it by reducing inflammation is to provide your nose and sinuses with clean, moist (between 35 and 55% relative humidity), and warm (between 65 and 85° F.) air. In most homes, especially during the winter months, this too can be a challenge. Adding to the problem is the fact that the majority of the world’s cities are plagued with polluted air. Your job is to breathe “healing” air, rather than irritating or inflaming air, to the best of your ability without having to move to a tropical island.
It is relatively easy with most parts of the skin to apply a medicinal cream or ointment to an inflamed or infected part in order to assist in the healing process. However, the mucous membrane, which can be considered a specialized part of the skin providing the lining for the nose, sinuses, and lungs, is difficult to reach. There are nasal sprays and emollients that can be applied to the nose, but steaming with essential oils and irrigation are required to directly benefit the sinuses.
A primary cause of most cases of moderate to severe chronic sinusitis, is some degree of fungal sinusitis, typically resulting from a candida/yeast overgrowth. Treatment is directed at substantially reducing the number of candida organisms, but the major challenge is that candida is a normal inhabitant of the body and thrives on sugar. Therefore, your objective is to maintain a normal level of candida while eating a somewhat restrictive candida-control diet.
These are all significant challenges confronting the sinus sufferer and help to explain why chronic sinusitis is the world’s most common respiratory condition. It’s neither a simple nor an easy problem to treat. Your body is capable of healing it, but it needs your help.
No trackbacks yet.