I am sure that the topic will arouse a lot of interest. After all, many people suffer from sinus problems, while the therapies offered by medicine are not very effective and have a lot of side effects.
To begin with a small note – self-diagnosis of sinusitis is quite dangerous, in one study it was found that 88% of patients complaining of “sinus” actually suffered from migraine pains. Of course, there is a way to deal with this, too, but to undertake effective self-treatment, one must first have a correct diagnosis. The pain is often identical, as migraine can attack the nerves of the sinuses. One of the criteria is a runny nose, if there is no runny nose, it is probably not sinus pain.
Nothing happens without a cause. A healthy person either won’t get sinusitis at all, or his body will deal with it in a few days. If the problem does not pass for several weeks, it means that our body already required treatment before the disease. A person in whom an infection develops in this way must have a weakened immunity, there is no room for discussion here. Simply, the body lacked what is necessary to wage a fight against the bug. This is also the reason why I will not describe any “rinses” or “inhalations”. – One should hit the source of the problem, not fight the symptoms.
Studies found that kids whose disease takes a chronic form sometimes have only half as much vitamin E as kids who don’t have the disease.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15646267/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12270766/
Since it is impossible for such a minor infection to cause half of the body’s supply of one vitamin to disappear, a causal relationship can be assumed here. You don’t have tocopherol, the body is unable to effectively attack bacteria and viruses in that area. Of course, there are other possibilities, for example, kids with low levels had a poorer diet, making them generally weaker, but this still does not explain the twofold difference in the level of this one substance at identical levels of vitamin A.
A few words about tocopherol. Deficiencies are said to be rare and, as wikipedia teaches, “symptoms have never actually been observed.” But what if chronic sinus infections are just such a symptom? It will suddenly turn out that not only is a gigantic percentage of the population suffering from deficiencies of it, but low levels of perhaps no other substance produce such frequent symptoms in developed countries!
Who is at risk of having problems getting it? As it turns out, one such group is vegetarians:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15213372/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1541796/
Levels drop very sharply in people suffering from fat absorption problems, such as liver or pancreatic disorders, irritable bowel syndrome or those suffering from cystic fibrosis, for example. In conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, this problem also arises, but it is not clear whether this is an effect of the disease or perhaps one of its causes. As a general rule, it can be considered a reasonable approach that for all kinds of chronic diseases with inflammation or problems with the digestive system, this supplement should be used. The exception, it is worth noting, is chronic kidney failure. In this disease, the body is unable to get rid of the metabolites of this substance, so their levels can reach dangerous values. Possible supplementation then needs to be confronted with the doctor, there are indications to do this, there are directly opposite. Unfortunately, in medicine nothing is only black or only white.
As I wrote in other posts – it is NOT true that it has been shown to protect against prostate cancer or heart disease. There are no clinical studies in which it protected against atherosclerosis, on the contrary, supplementation often increased the risk of death, and in one study it doubled the risk of prostate cancer.
In fairness, it must be admitted that perhaps supplementation would prove to be a miracle cure for many diseases. The problem is that it is not one substance, but a collection of several. Large doses of one will flush the others out of the body, thus, paradoxically, causing a deficiency. Perhaps if the right supplement were used in clinical trials (which has not been done), it would help. For the time being, however, it must be assumed that it is at best neutral against cancer or heart disease.
It follows from the above that, firstly, over-supplementation should be avoided if we do not have a suspected deficiency, and secondly, that the so-called “mixed tocopherols” should be used. Supplements of this type contain all forms of this vitamin.
The effects should be quite rapid and pronounced, with sufficiently high doses, on the order of up to 1200 IU per day. With such an amount, there are practically never side effects, and even if – they are very minor, in the kind of mild nausea.
Since it dilutes the blood, people taking warfarin-type drugs should consult a doctor. However, without risk, they can go for doses much lower than recommended here.
Mega-doses should not be used for a long time – after just a month, the level of tissue saturation should be quite high, and it is safe to go to 50-150 IU per day (in practice, a capsule of 400 IU every 3 days, for example). Long-term use of amounts above 400 IU per day increases the risk of stroke.
Let’s leave out the unfortunate tocopherol. In the study quoted above, people with sinus pain also had lower levels of zinc, copper and vitamin C. I discussed the two elements in a other post, and as for the vitamin, you don’t need to take large doses to feel the difference, 1 gram a day is completely sufficient to saturate tissues well above the values that healthy people had in the quoted study. And this amount can easily be obtained from a healthy diet.
Vitamin D3 turns out to be very important. In one study, supplementation clearly reduced the number of infections, including sinus infections.
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/6/e001663.full
And finally, cysteine. This is probably the best thing you can buy at the pharmacy when you want to take care of your overall health and boost your immunity. But I already wrote about it in a previous post:
https://healthytreatment.org/2022/02/02/cysteine-the-best-supplement/