site banner
PaperclipPerfector  22d ago (text post)   1324 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for October 30, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Seeking advice on sinusitis. I’ve had this and general upper respiratory things recurring for as long as I can remember. 30 years, maybe more. I remember a doc writing a prescription for some nasal spray drugs when I was 14 or 15 and reading his scrawled handwriting “acute sinusitis”.

Past couple of years this has been getting worse and recurring with greater frequency. Once led to an ER visit with literally unbearable pain, when I was placed on a hydration and strong painkilling drip and kept overnight. Past 3-4 months has been characterised by significant nasal blockages, sinus pain behind forehead, eyes, cheeks, teeth.

No joke, but I’m not sure I know what it feels like to breathe comfortably. One or both nostrils are almost always blocked, and I’m either clearing them violently or coughing up and hawking out viscous glue from deep within me.

Lifestyle: I’m quite fit. Run plenty. Marathon last year, aim for 60-80 miles a month, can fairly straightforwardly get off the couch and jog a half marathon (if slowly). Nutrition could definitely be better. Despite running, am still ~5-10 pounds above ideal weight and carrying some belly/visceral fat.

Interested to hear if anyone has had similar experiences and if so if they were able to overcome it. (I’ve often thought of this as a strong but passing discomfort, but then it never passed, and recently been having existential dread at this not going away and actually getting worse and leading to a dire quality of life over time.)

I agree with the suggestion that you see a doctor, preferably a specialist (an otolaryngologist or Ear/Nose/Throat doctor) if you can be referred to one. Chronic sinusitis can result from ongoing inflammation from allergies, from environmental irritants, or anatomical abnormalities (think nasal polyps.) It sounds like this is affecting your quality of life and that's a good enough reason to talk to a competent doctor if you can.

My kid had her sinuses drilled out this past summer. Her ENT is cautious, so prior to surgery he had her take targeted antibiotics based on the infection(s) in her head. He had her treat her allergies. He did steroid treatments. She cut out potential triggers (dairy, sugar, wheat). But after a few years of throwing things at it and the concrete junk in her sinuses not clearing out, surgery it was. It was out patient. She was in significant pain for a week and then was generally exhausted and spacey for another few weeks. But she can breathe now. She doesn't have constant pain in her face. She doesn't catch every bug that comes along. She can get sick without bleeding out of her eyes (cool party trick!)

I recommend seeing an ENT. You can probably find one who will jump straight to surgery, but it might be worth making sure none of the "easier" things will fix it. My kid was truly miserable for about a week and my husband was almost to the point of calling her doc and begging for pain meds beyond Motrin + Tylenol. OTOH months later she's glad she had the surgery and seems to have halfway forgotten how miserable she was while healing.

That sounds rough. I got a single shot of tramadol after the surgery and that's it, they offered a nightcap shot, but I refused it and didn't need any meds after that, just felt like shit for three days.

I think hers was an extreme case. Every single sinus cavity she had was full of gunk and had been for years. And I think she was really sensitive to pain in her face. She also ended up with necrotic uvula (no big deal, the dead bit falls off, but it was additional pain).

Good pain meds would have been nice. But a humidifier and heat and ice packs and parents at her beck and call worked. The surgery worked wonders but I think it's definitely worth it to try other possible solutions first.

My sinuses were completely full as well and the doc was quite surprised I had no complaints about them: no headaches, no sensitivity. I guess I was lucky.

Have you seen a doctor yet? You'll probably need an ENT.

This could be a million things. Atypical anatomy. Something like allergies or GERD causing odd problems.

Serious things are possible and you'll want to rule them out.

Have you ever tried modifying your diet? I have a friend who said their sinutitus improved significantly after eliminating certain foods (dairy I think)

There are over-the-counter mild nasal steroid sprays (active ingredient Mometasone furoate 50 micrograms/spray) that can alleviate some symptoms of sinusitis and can be used indefinitely. Go to a pharmacist and explain your symptoms and see what they recommend. Try a regime before considering surgery.

Consider getting checked out for hayfever/allergies. I'm not sure how effective anti-histamines are for allergic based sinusitis (not a doctor).

Otherwise, yeah go find a referral to an ENT specialist (otorhinolaryngologist?) and tell them what you've said here.

Edit: Consider environmental factors that changed when this got a lot worse. New pets? New House? New city with new air quality/pollen count?

Consider getting checked out for hayfever/allergies.

I took way too long to do this after moving to a new house and subsequently turning into a mouth breather, because I never thought of myself as a person with allergies. It turned out that, although I wasn't allergic to the oak pollen that would fall like yellow snow around my previous home, I was very allergic to the relatively invisible wild grass pollens at the new place. A year or so of allergy shots cleared it up.

Are the Nasonex sprays okay for indefinite use? I was prescribed Flonase nasal spray (way back when it was still prescription-only) as a temporary fix while the shots were doing their thing, and I was warned at the time that some of the OTC options let you build up a tolerance if you used them too frequently and would then have withdrawal issues afterwards.

I had allergy issues and went to an ENT (after basically asking a GP directly for a referral and giving them enough dot points about my situation that they rubber stamped my request). The ENT I saw put me onto this stuff and said that he (personally) uses it regularly for sinusitis. I didn't use it long enough to know if the active ingredient can create a tolerance.

I'm not a doctor at all, just a clumsy googling amateur interested in his own health (like many here).

Cheers for all this. Did get new pet house cats (2) three years ago, which does coincide with worsening symptoms, but also my diet has slacked off a little too in that period of time after a very disciplined 2017-2020. Thanks again.

Surgery. I used to live with one blocked nostril and multi-week coughs after every cold caused by backdrip, but after my breathing got even worse due to the development of AERD, I finally did the surgery: septoplasty, turbinectomy, endoscopic polysinusotomy.

Discharged after a single night in hospital, the following week was a pain, since I could only breathe through the mouth and had to sleep in a semi-sitting position, but as soon as the stents were taken out it was fine and got only better as the swelling subsided. Washing out massive bloody crusts with a neti pot was a very cool experience.

Definitely consider this post ENT specialist consultation. I literally have no idea what “washing out massive bloody crusts with a neti pot” even means.

The whole process was rather simple: I went to see the ENT doctor, he took a peek inside my nasal cavity and sent me to get a CT scan and referred me to a pulmonologist and an allergologist. Came back with the scan, he took a look at the CT scan and wrote up a diagnosis for the insurance company. They approved the surgery, I went to the local polyclinic for a surgery check-up, arrived at the hospital with the results and woke up with my nose thoroughly eviscerated.

How did you get viscera in your nose in the first place?

Surgery?

A humorless pedant explains the joke in excessive detail: the word "viscera" technically refers to the internal organs found in the torso, such as heart, liver, intestines, etc. "Eviscerate" originally meant removing those organs, for example while preparing a freshly killed animal for consumption. The other poster was joking that your use of the word eviscerated implied that prior to your surgery your nose had contained some unneeded heart/liver/intestines/etc.

Thank you, this was funny, to quote one mildly autistic PM I worked with.

If it makes you feel better, I had issues with this for years as a kid, especially in winter. Not sure if it was something in the house, but it ended for good after I moved.
Have you moved between environments at all since it became an issue? Any possible clues there?

No, lived in same place for 15 years. Countryside, so air is pretty clean. Not ruling out environmental problems, though.

I suspected mold issues in the ramshackle house I grew up in. Not much of a lead, but if it clears up if you ever spend a few months away from home, it might be a start.

I have sinus issues and do jal neti regularly, has helped me a ton. Get a neti pot, add lukewarm water, salt and do irrigation. When you do it, do not suck in or blow out water as that will cause it to get in your ears. Doing it regularly helps a lot. I was skeptical of it till I tried it. You can take an anti congestion spray and then do neti 10 minutes later if you have clogged nose.

For context, I am extremely suspectible to throat infections and have had to use anti bioticis very very frequently for it. Jal Neti is the safest thing I do daily to help me stay better.

Same problem here. 2nd generation, too - it's certainly genetic. Not overcome it so far. I breathe hard, I often wake up at night from not getting enough air, and I get recurring and long-lasting colds at a rather bothersome frequency especially in cold weather. I can do sports just fine when I'm not having a cold, which sadly means not that often, but breathing is troublesome at rest and at sleep.

Xylometazolinechloride works fantastically at fixing the issue...but is said to make it worse with prolonged use, so I don't.

I once got my face scanned and they detected some deformations in the cartilage of the nose which seems to block one nostril almost entirely, and my Otorhinolaryngologist (do anglos really use that term?) recommends getting surgery to fix it. I've been putting it off. So surgery it will have to be at some point, but my confidence in it actually helping is low since a family member with the same problem had it and still catches a cold practically every other tuesday.

my Otorhinolaryngologist (do anglos really use that term?)

Its Ear/Nose/Throat (ENT) doctor/specialist where I come from.

Same as in Germany, then.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats