On Feb 29, 3:39 pm, dyger...@gmail.com wrote:

.
I would ask around and see if anyone is treating sinusitis with
success in your community.
Your experience is the rule rather than the exception. Marla, Helen,
Judy, Duke, myself, we have all had it.
In 2001 I was told that my sinuses had nothing in them culturable even
though they were draining green, and I could culture quite a bit from
it.
I have an ENT who is a doll now, and knows about biofilms.  He wants
to hand my care off to a Allergy-Infectious Disease guy. The ENTs are
really surgeons.  If you have a broken nose, or a growth in your
nasal structures, then you need an ENT.  If you are going to have the
biofilm scraped out, then you need an ENT, but it is much better to
find one that acknowledges the existence of bacterial biofilms so that
they know what it actually is that they are trying to remove,  and you
are more likely to get approperate care after surgery.  (the clueless
ones tend to go after bone instead of the film)
If you have something that would only be spread by cold steel surgery,
then you need another kind of surgery or another kind of doctor.
Family physicians and internists are often good partners over the long
haul treating the infection, especially one that has sinus trouble.
They often have the same experiences that we do.  Dr Tichnor that
Steven goes to is an internist who specializes in the treatment of
sinusitis.
Judy has commented about he length of time on antibiotics that it
takes to eradicate TB from a patient. From what I know about persister
cells in biofilms and the  complexity of the plumbing and nooks and
crannies in the phyronasal system where  biofilms can lurk,  I think
that the requirement to stamp out a chronic sinus infection and allow
the regrowth of goblet cells and cilia is probably the same, nine
months of continuous treatment. After having this stuff gone only to
resurrect itself a couple of times, I think it will take 9 months of
treatment to kill it off for good, or treatment with phages which will
constantly kill off the bacteria or a vaccine against staph and e-
coli.   Given the present standard of care, the stance of the
insurance companies  and the anti-antibiotic sentiment I think the
only way to treat for most of us to treat for nine months is to find
something effective for ourselves that is non-prescription and readily
available.

Maybe someday in a couple of years we will be able to drag ourselves
to the doctor to be made better and be met with understanding and
effective treatment, but mostly not yet, soon but not yet.

On Feb 29, 1:39 pm, dyger...@gmail.com wrote:

One thing ENT's always do.  The put a couple of sprays of coccaine up
each nostril and within a minute or two, the nasal passage is wide
open.  Coccaine, in low dosages, is a great (the best)
vasoconstrictor.  They then look in and  see nothing of what they are
supposed to - that is, a restricted airway.  They don't see deeply
satruated nasal membranes - saturated with mucus.   I had trouble with
second hand smoke, red wine, and other things that would cause one
entire nasal passage to clog up, the other passage was open
sufficiently that between breathing partially through one of the
restricted airways and partially through my mouth, I managed to get
enough oxygen to keep me on this earth for 58 years.  I learned that
if I used one - just one - spray in the clogged nostril, that my
membranes would drain and the mucus would drain down the back of my
throat and I could brethe clearly again.  I also use a steroid spray,
actifed, and Ipratropium Bromide as needed.  My membranes no longer
are getting so infected and inflamed as they were for so many years.

Sorry that he is the only ENT in your area. My sinus problems sound
similar to yours. My mucus is yellow or yellow-green, and it has been
like this for at least 4 years. When I told my doctor a few years ago,
that I did not believe my sinus infection ever went away, she tilted her
head when she looked at me, sorta like a dog does. Some doctors, just do
not seem to get it.

One year ago, I moved out of state.  I will eventually find an ENT, but
right now, I am having a hard time finding someone to cut my hair.<g> I
have been doing okay, but the infection is not going away. In this
group, I found that I am not alone, and that meant a lot to me.  The
wisdom in this group can not be beat, either!  Best of luck to you.

Becca

(quotes from two different people)

All he probably meant is there isn't anything wrong with the macroscopic
structure of your sinuses.

I have a website on food intolerances, http://camoo.freeshell.org/why.html 

Food intolerances are terribly ignored by doctors so that is something to
look into.  

I don't know when somebody would give 9 months of antibiotics at full dose.  
It might not work, either.  You might just get antibiotic-resistant bacteria
living in your sinuses.  

I had 6 months of Bactrim at half-dose for bladder infections.  But I got a
sinus infection while I was on the Bactrim, which is also a sinus antibiotic.  

Laura

You're assuming that antibiotics would do it, if given long enough.  
And that giving them for 9 months is a reasonable thing to do.  

But that is likely not true.  Bodies are complicated.  There is no
solid research to support giving a full dose of antibiotics for
sinusitis for 9 months, or doctors would do it.  When people find
out the real treatment for sinusitis, it will probably be a lot
different from "simply give oral antibiotics for a long long time".

Taking antibiotics for a long time could have serious side effects.
There are antibiotics that don't go to the body in general, but end
up being concentrated in the urinary tract.  There isn't anything
(that you would take orally) that would concentrate in the sinuses.  

A sinus infection antibiotic, that you take by mouth, is going to
be a general antibiotic, that goes to the whole body.  And that might
have serious side effects, if taken for a long time.

A while ago I read in Discover magazine about a woman who almost died
because she was given an antibiotic by a dentist that had a bad
effect on her intestinal flora - it caused some problem that almost
killed her and was hard to diagnose.

I had 6 months of Bactrim, but only at half dose. They would probably
really hesitate to give Bactrim at full dose for that long.  

But as I said, Bactrim is also a sinus infection antibiotic, and I
got a sinus infection while on a half-dose of Bactrim for 6 months.
I got no bladder infections.  

Sinuses may be a bit harder to reach with oral antibiotics than
bladders.  

Doctors aren't idiots.  A lot of doctors are conservative, they won't
suggest anything to you that isn't supported by a lot of research.  
And so a lot of time it makes sense to be aware of what people say
works for them.  

If you wanted to investigate the effect of long-term antibiotics on
sinuses, there are herbal antibiotics that possibly you could try.  
These come with warnings about not taking them for too long, though.  
But if you wanted to try that anyway - possibly messing up your
health in some other way - you can legally do it.  

Goldenseal is an herbal antibiotic but it doesn't go into the general
blood circulation, it concentrates in the urinary tract.  

Laura

Also, writing to a researcher once might be excusable.  But writing
repeatedly is harassment.  Who needs extra noise in their life?  

Almost surely, if what you're writing about isn't just irrelevant to
their research, they already know about it.  Their research is their
job, and they're trained for it.  Most likely you're just wasting
your time and someone else's.  

I emailed a vitamin D researcher once.  I'd read about vitamin D
helping to turn down autoimmunity.  I knew that celiac disease is
somewhat obscure as an autoimmune disease.  Also it was suggestive
that Middle Easterners are much less likely to get celiac disease.
This is usually thought to be because the Middle East has had
agriculture for a long time, so evolution would have had a long time
to eliminate people who are gluten-sensitive.  But also, I thought,
maybe there's a vitamin D aspect, because the Middle East is very
sunny.  He emailed back that they were doing some research on
vitamin D and celiac disease (he didn't want to say what).  
So I got the gratification of having made a good guess about a
promising area for research.

But, even though it was a good guess, he'd already made it.  

And my good guess didn't do what I'd hoped for - it didn't make my
food reactions any less severe.  

Maybe vitamin D would help with sinusitis, since it regulates the
immune system.  At least, if you don't take too much of it, it
won't hurt you (the upper daily limit is 2000IU/day).  Which can't
be said of antibiotics.

Laura