Most doctors eventually realize how difficult it is to treat sinusitis. If you have been diagnosed as having sinusitis, and have sought help from allergists, ear-nose-and-throat-doctors, internists or surgeons, you know that you still have sinusitis, even though you may have had surgery, allergy shots, all kinds of medications and shots or any other treatment.
Many people find some relief with saline irrigation, using various devices that are readily available in drugstores; check with your doctor or pharmacist for their recommendations.
Your sinuses are cavities containing air in the bones of your head. They make your head lighter. If the bones in your head were solid, your head would weigh more than 50 pounds, your neck would not be able to hold it up or turn it, and the human race would never have survived in competition with other animals. The problem with having sinuses is that the air in a sinus cavity must always have the same air pressure as the air outside, so all sinuses must have passageways to the outside that allow the pressure inside a sinus to be equal to the outside pressure.
If the barometric pressure drops suddenly, as it does often before a storm, and your sinus passageway is blocked, the higher pressure in the sinus will press on the bones surrounding it to cause a horrible headache. When your nose is stuffy, the inner linings of your nose are swollen, and the same swelling can shut the sinus passageway, preventing air pressure inside your sinus from changing to balance the pressure outside, and you can develop a sinus headache.
If your nose is stuffy most of the time and your mucous is clear, you could have an allergy, an irritation from smoking or air pollution or from some unknown cause. If thick yellow-green mucous drips from your nose, you probably have a sinus infection. Your doctor should order a sinus cat scan X ray. If the X ray shows that you have fluid levels in your sinuses, you have sinusitis.
Nobody really knows how to treat sinusitis. Allergy injections are almost always a complete waste of time, unless you get a stuffy nose every spring and fall when the tree, grass and ragweed pollen are in the air. People who have a chronic stuffy nose all year round rarely benefit from allergy shots. Sinus surgery usually is ineffective and costs a lot on money and pain for no benefit whatever. A study from the Mayo Clinic showed that people with chronic sinusitis usually carry fungi in their noses, but multiple efforts to treat sinusitis with long-term anti-fungal medications have failed.
Checked 1/12/20
