What are the causes of Chronic Sinusitis?

You can help understand chronic sinusitis treatment if you understand what causes your chronic sinusitis symptoms. Indiana can be a tuff place to live if you struggle with symptoms of nasal congestion, sinus infections, thick nasal drainage, sinus headache, sinus pain or pressure or pain in the upper teeth and gums. If you are like me you have struggled with chronic sinusitis your whole life. Maybe you are looking for solutions.  That journey is what eventually drew me to specialize in treating patients with sinus and allergy symptoms.  I only see the worst patients now in my office and if you are wondering what you can try at home so you don’t have to come see me or another sinus specialist, you have reached the right place!

This is the first post of a four part series. In the coming weeks I will be outlining the various over-the-counter treatments available to help improve and in some cases eliminate chronic sinusitis symptoms.  But first let’s outline and answer some common symptoms complaints and questions I hear from my sinus patients every-day.

Are my chronic sinus symptoms normal?

Here are the most common symptoms I see from patients who present to my office.  You’re not the only one!  Millions of Americans have sinus symptoms making them sick every day.  The good news is there are simple solutions out there if you are suffering from one or many of these symptoms.

What are the causes chronic sinusitis symptoms?

Let’s look at the root cause of chronic sinusitis. Simply put, it’s INFLAMMATION. Inflammation causes swelling of the lining of your nose called the nasal mucosa.  Unfortunately the sinus and nasal airway passages are narrow to begin with and a few millimeters of swelling can dramatically decrease, narrow or even close off either the path of air for breathing or the path of mucous drainage of the sinuses.  When this happens you will frequently experience one or many of the symptoms listed above.

What causes chronic nasal and sinus inflammation?

This follow-up question I get all the time.  My patients always want to know what are the causes of chronic sinusitis, what is causing all this inflammation, and how to get rid of it.  That is where things can get complicated.  Depending on where you live in the United States, nasal and sinus inflammation can be caused from a variety of triggers including pollen, allergies, farm dust, farm chemicals, air-pollution, ozone, mold, and various other environmental exposures. 

Your job or where you live and play can even be the problem depending on your exposures.  More recently there is new research indicating diet and food related allergies as well as leaky gut can contribute to worsening chronic nasal and sinus inflammation.  Inflammatory triggers causing continued symptoms lasting more than 2-3 months leads to a condition called chronic sinusitis.

What are the best ways to reduce my symptoms without seeing a doctor?

I see a lot of patients who reach out to me with this question.  That’s understandable because if you don’t control your symptoms now and don’t start reversing the inflammation causing your chronic sinusitis symptoms, at some point you will get so bad that over-the-counter remedies won’t work.  That’s when you will be forced to see a sinus specialist like me.  The patients I see in my office typically need imaging, like a sinus CT, and procedures to reverse things.  It becomes a more involved approach to care.

Some of these procedures are in-office treatments like Balloon Sinuplasty, Vivaer, or Rhinaer. These can be very effective at improving nasal obstruction, nasal congestion, and chronic sinusitis but other treatments may require invasive trips to the operating room.  So before you get to that point or even if you are bad enough where you are thinking you need to have something done, it’s worth it to try one of these simple strategies.

Over-counter-medications and treatment

The over-the-counter treatments I am going to outline over the coming weeks are available to anyone.  They are inexpensive and either involve no medication or medications that are now available without prescription that have been proven safe and can be very effective for many individuals.  All of them target that thing that is causing all the problems.  Inflammation.  Stay tuned for more!

Click HERE if you want to start an immediate discussion with me about your nasal sinus symptoms and options for care.

I sincerely hope you found this article helpful.  Have a great day!

Dr. B