Sinus Cleansing

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Doctor David Hill and today we're going to be talking about sinus cleaning. Now, why in the world would you need to clean your sinuses, how dirty can they get. Well first of all we need to talk about what sinuses are. The sinuses are air containing cavities withing the skull. There are two behind these bones, two behind these bones and then two more pairs that are deeper within the skull. Normally, sinuses take care of themselves. They have cilia which are tiny little hairs on the inside that keep mucus and fluid flowing from the sinuses down in to the nose where you sneeze it or swallow it or get rid of it in some fashion or another. But when the sinuses get infected with a virus or you when you have bad allergies, sometimes that mechanism gets clogged up. Now if they're clogged up from allergies the best thing to do is to treat the allergies. There are several different kinds of medications, many antihistamines are available over the counter but probably the most effective medicines are by prescription. These are nasal steroids that you actually squirt up in to the nose to reduce the inflammation from allergies. When you get a cold or sinusitis, a bacterial sinus infection, we're learning more and more that using nasal saline irrigation can actually help relieve the symptoms and sometimes lead to a faster cure. In babies, we use saline drops. You can make these by taking a half a teaspoon of salt and dissolving it in one cup of water and then you can drop just a few little droplets in the nose using a medicine dropper or even a wet towel or a rag and then suck those back out with one of those little suction bulbs that you usually get at the hospital. You can buy them for a couple of dollars at the drugstore. Now this is going to make babies very mad so you don't want to do it a whole lot and if you over do it you can actually increase the swelling inside the nose. So you want to hold it for meal times or sleep times when a clogged up nose is really causing the baby problems. Another tip, with the suction bulb, don't go out, up. It looks like that's where the hole goes but really it goes straight back. So just go straight back, just right in to the nose. You don't have to go way back there, just a couple of millimeters will do. Adults are more and more commonly using something called a neti pot. This is a centuries old tool and ayurvedic or yogic medicine. And this allows you to instill salt water right up in to the nose, usually you pour it in one side and you blow it out the other side or out the same side. And we're actually finding that adults with chronic or recurrent sinusitis, this may work as well as or better than antibiotics to fight these infections. Children who have a bacterial sinus infection still tend to benefit from antibiotics and it's pretty hard to use a neti pot in most young children. But in older children you may be able to teach them to comply. Talking about cleaning out the sinuses, I'm Doctor David Hill."