Many years ago I stumbled onto Beerzoids and sinus flushing.
I had had periodic sinus pain over the years and would routinely get a bad cold or two over the winter which would always end up in some kind of long-lasting sinus misery.
This misery would usually manifest itself as sharp pains in my sinus area. It would take weeks to go away on its own and it seemed to be getting worse year to year.
I searched in vain for a solution - tried all the usual over the counter stuff which never worked right - and finally I ended up in some sort of Health Forum with this 40-page series of posts by a guy named Beerzoids. Apparently he had had it far worse than me but had somehow, due to extensive experimentation, figured out that if you knelt down, put your head on the floor, and poured a diluted hydrogen peroxide solution into your nose it fixed your sinus problems.
(As a side note the original chain of posts seems to have been rolled up in to some sort of summary posting.)
Now I was not interested in the usual heavy duty antibiotic and surgical treatments because of their side effects (more on the side effects of antibiotics in future posts) so this seemed like an attractive option.
(I am not squeamish about this sort of thing though I know that others are so please bear with me.)
Following the instructions from the site I whipped up a batch of diluted peroxide and, armed with a little blue dropper bottle from my lovely wife set about fixing my sinus problem. It did take some nerve the first time to do this because they talked about "bad things" like burning your eustachian tubes.
So, as per instructions, I knelt down in front of the bath tube, bent over and stuck my head onto the bottom of the bath tube, and shot the stuff into my nostrils.
They were right - there is a burning sensations. Now, I have a high tolerance for pain, but this stung like hell. Plus, you could feel it foaming and gurgling just like pouring peroxide onto an infected wound or cut. After the bubbling and burning die down I stood up and blew my nose.
The point here is that the diluted peroxide gets up into your sinuses. Sort like getting water up you nose when swimming.
You know your doing it right when you can swing you head around and feel it running into the various parts of your sinuses.
Out came the first bits of a long standing sinus infection (no need for further description, at least at this point).
I struggled to do this regularly for a while and within a couple of days the sinus pain was gone. I was able to work out when and how to do it and soon I ended my sinus suffering completely.
I was able to dispose of a whole medicine cabinet full of "Cold Remedies", Zicam, and such.
I would still get the yearly flues but I was always able to clear the sinus infection quickly there after.
So now the gears are turning and I think to myself - I wonder what will happen if I use this during a cold or flu? I was now in uncharted territory relative to my hero Beerzoids but I figured what the hell.
The next time I felt a cold coming on I doused my sinuses - probably two to three times a day.
Something magical happened. My colds and flues was never really able to "take hold" like it usually did. Generally I would start out with a sore throat, then a runny nose, then a cough, then misery for a several days, then a week or two of getting over it.
With my new experiments I was able to bypass 95% of the usual cold and flu misery - usually just feeling a bit feverish for two days.
So I started to think about why this was so. The only conclusions I could come to was this: Colds and flues (though not all flues as will cover in another post) don't work like you (or modern medical science) think they do.
When you start a cold it begins in your sinuses producing lots of mucus. Pre-1970's or so you would blow your nose until the cold was over. Starting the 70's people began taking decongestants that "dried up" their cold. So let's think about that.
Here's a normal bodily function that, when we get sick, we halt instead of letting it run its course - with the side effect that all the crud and nastiness is backed up and compacted inside our body - in this case our sinuses. Does this really make any kind of sense?
So what if we applied this principle with any other bodily function? (Say, treating a stomach flu by not expelling from either end until it was over.) How would that feel and what would it do to you? Nothing good, I imagine.
I think colds and flues start in your sinuses by filling them with mucus. Naturally your tendency is to blow your nose to clear them (that's why grandma always told you not to "sniff"). But these days your first reaction is to "dry up" the cold with some over the counter medication. Unfortunately, instead of fixing the problem it compacts all the junk in your sinuses and it gets infected. This is why you blow out all that colorful crud over the usual course of cold or flu.
As the infection expands post-nasal drip carries that infection down into your lungs and viola - you now now have a cough.
So my theory, born out by my own personal experimentation, is that if you break the cycle of letting that crud in your sinuses get infected in the first place by sinus flushing you end up with only the cold and none of the rest.
Modern medicine has, in my opinion, made this sort of cold and flu far worse by creating tools to compact this infection in your sinuses. Coupled with over prescribing antibiotics to try and clear the infection once it takes root you have a prescription (no pun intended) for misery.
So for me, in the last five years, including one really nasty case which I will talk about another time (known as the "nasty yellow mucus flu" around my house) I have not missed a single day of work, music, or anything else due to either a cold or flu and I have not had one cough - not one - including the during the "nasty yellow flu". Have I been sick over that time with a cold or flu - sure - but its no longer debilitating and it no longer lingers for more than a couple of days.
Now there is more here to cover but that's all for this post.
I had had periodic sinus pain over the years and would routinely get a bad cold or two over the winter which would always end up in some kind of long-lasting sinus misery.
This misery would usually manifest itself as sharp pains in my sinus area. It would take weeks to go away on its own and it seemed to be getting worse year to year.
I searched in vain for a solution - tried all the usual over the counter stuff which never worked right - and finally I ended up in some sort of Health Forum with this 40-page series of posts by a guy named Beerzoids. Apparently he had had it far worse than me but had somehow, due to extensive experimentation, figured out that if you knelt down, put your head on the floor, and poured a diluted hydrogen peroxide solution into your nose it fixed your sinus problems.
(As a side note the original chain of posts seems to have been rolled up in to some sort of summary posting.)
Now I was not interested in the usual heavy duty antibiotic and surgical treatments because of their side effects (more on the side effects of antibiotics in future posts) so this seemed like an attractive option.
(I am not squeamish about this sort of thing though I know that others are so please bear with me.)
Following the instructions from the site I whipped up a batch of diluted peroxide and, armed with a little blue dropper bottle from my lovely wife set about fixing my sinus problem. It did take some nerve the first time to do this because they talked about "bad things" like burning your eustachian tubes.
So, as per instructions, I knelt down in front of the bath tube, bent over and stuck my head onto the bottom of the bath tube, and shot the stuff into my nostrils.
They were right - there is a burning sensations. Now, I have a high tolerance for pain, but this stung like hell. Plus, you could feel it foaming and gurgling just like pouring peroxide onto an infected wound or cut. After the bubbling and burning die down I stood up and blew my nose.
The point here is that the diluted peroxide gets up into your sinuses. Sort like getting water up you nose when swimming.
You know your doing it right when you can swing you head around and feel it running into the various parts of your sinuses.
Out came the first bits of a long standing sinus infection (no need for further description, at least at this point).
I struggled to do this regularly for a while and within a couple of days the sinus pain was gone. I was able to work out when and how to do it and soon I ended my sinus suffering completely.
I was able to dispose of a whole medicine cabinet full of "Cold Remedies", Zicam, and such.
I would still get the yearly flues but I was always able to clear the sinus infection quickly there after.
So now the gears are turning and I think to myself - I wonder what will happen if I use this during a cold or flu? I was now in uncharted territory relative to my hero Beerzoids but I figured what the hell.
The next time I felt a cold coming on I doused my sinuses - probably two to three times a day.
Something magical happened. My colds and flues was never really able to "take hold" like it usually did. Generally I would start out with a sore throat, then a runny nose, then a cough, then misery for a several days, then a week or two of getting over it.
With my new experiments I was able to bypass 95% of the usual cold and flu misery - usually just feeling a bit feverish for two days.
So I started to think about why this was so. The only conclusions I could come to was this: Colds and flues (though not all flues as will cover in another post) don't work like you (or modern medical science) think they do.
When you start a cold it begins in your sinuses producing lots of mucus. Pre-1970's or so you would blow your nose until the cold was over. Starting the 70's people began taking decongestants that "dried up" their cold. So let's think about that.
Here's a normal bodily function that, when we get sick, we halt instead of letting it run its course - with the side effect that all the crud and nastiness is backed up and compacted inside our body - in this case our sinuses. Does this really make any kind of sense?
So what if we applied this principle with any other bodily function? (Say, treating a stomach flu by not expelling from either end until it was over.) How would that feel and what would it do to you? Nothing good, I imagine.
I think colds and flues start in your sinuses by filling them with mucus. Naturally your tendency is to blow your nose to clear them (that's why grandma always told you not to "sniff"). But these days your first reaction is to "dry up" the cold with some over the counter medication. Unfortunately, instead of fixing the problem it compacts all the junk in your sinuses and it gets infected. This is why you blow out all that colorful crud over the usual course of cold or flu.
As the infection expands post-nasal drip carries that infection down into your lungs and viola - you now now have a cough.
So my theory, born out by my own personal experimentation, is that if you break the cycle of letting that crud in your sinuses get infected in the first place by sinus flushing you end up with only the cold and none of the rest.
Modern medicine has, in my opinion, made this sort of cold and flu far worse by creating tools to compact this infection in your sinuses. Coupled with over prescribing antibiotics to try and clear the infection once it takes root you have a prescription (no pun intended) for misery.
So for me, in the last five years, including one really nasty case which I will talk about another time (known as the "nasty yellow mucus flu" around my house) I have not missed a single day of work, music, or anything else due to either a cold or flu and I have not had one cough - not one - including the during the "nasty yellow flu". Have I been sick over that time with a cold or flu - sure - but its no longer debilitating and it no longer lingers for more than a couple of days.
Now there is more here to cover but that's all for this post.
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