Help Your Medicine Clear Your Chronic Sinusitis

Your Mind and the Cure:
Can your mind help you clear your chronic sinusitis? Yes. Can it help reduce the amount of antibiotic you take? Yes. But in order to mobilize your own body defenses, you must learn to engage your brain in healing your sinus condition.
Thirty Seven Million Sinus Sufferers:
Even though we have drugs and well-trained specialists, we continue to have thirty seven million countrymen with chronic sinus disease. Worse than the numbers of sinus patients, is the fact that the bacteria have become more resistant to our stable of antibiotics. Today it is hard to believe that in the 50’s anyone with a sinus problem got a week of pills and was cured. Sinus surgery numbers were nowhere near the 200,000 plus being done today. In order for you to avoid being 200,001, let’s use all the weapons we can.
I propose that you use what my patients do; engage the mind to get better healing.
Enhance Your Medications:
How can you enhance the effectiveness of the medicine you are taking? You should understand as fully as possible how your drug works. If it is an allergy medication that blocks the release of histamine, understanding this action and even visualizing the image of histamine being blocked, might help the medication work "better." Another factor too: if you know how the medicine works and visualize it working, that often relaxes you, and reduces your anxiety. In a relaxed state your brain can direct your healing elements.
For example, when you do Nasal Pulsatile Irrigation, this works better if you understand that there are millions of tiny cilia that wave to move mucus from the nose. This mucus traps bacteria. By moving the mucus out of the nose, then down to the stomach where the bacteria are disposed of, you lower the bacterial count and then your natural healing is more effective. You can visualize that the pulsing saline stream is gently rocking the cilia back and forth and energizing them to move faster and more effectively.
It is Not “wishful thinking:”
You may ask, isn’t this just imagination? No, because when you give a placebo and get a result similar to the real pill's result, you can measure those changes - swelling goes down, blood vessels dilate, and the area gets warmer. Remember, no matter what the pill or the procedure, it is still the body that makes the changes. The pills stimulate the body to put out the good signals. If the signal is to reduce swelling, the body produces the right chemicals. Even for an antibiotic, you need the good white cells to come in and kill off the weakened bacteria and cart the dead/weak bodies away.
When the sinus patient does Hydro Pulse Nasal/Sinus irrigation, he remembers how good it felt and the relief he felt. By recalling that "good result" when you do the next irrigation, you amplify the good result because you engage your mind. The healing elements are increased in these patients because the body recalls what it did when the treatment cleared their symptoms. The proof? Some persons who perform Hydro Pulse sinus irrigation daily feel their nose start to improve even before they start the actual nasal irrigation! Often a pain patient is relieved of their pain long before the pain shot has a chance to work; or the placebo may work too.
Remember Pavlov’s dog that salivated when he heard the bell? The beneficial effect happens here as a conditioned reflex. Your body/mind has memory of how good the nose felt with the Hydro Pulse irrigation; you recall the gentle pulsing like a massage. Even the rhythm of the Hydro Pulse may be enough to relax you to aid in healing.
You don’t heal well when you have anxiety; you do heal well when you are relaxed.
Cancer Application:
In some cancer clinics, they ask the patients to visualize armies at war- like in the movie, "Lord of the Rings." The good body defenders are destroying the bad cancer cells. Does this visualization stimulate more of the body's defense cells? There is evidence that it does. Even visualizing the medicine getting to the affected area might relax the patient, relax the blood vessels, so that more of the anti-tumor drug can get to the growth. If you are taking an antibiotic, visualize that the antibiotic is the good army and the bacteria are the bad guys. By symbolism, you visualize that the good antibiotic warriors are defeating the bad guys. Incidentally, much of the brain works by symbolism.
Every athlete is taught to visualize a good pitch, a good throw. This takes away the negative of "I might fail," and helps the athlete. The athlete never wants to feel, "I can't." That will reduce her ability. Same with medication. Visualize, “This medicine will make you well.”
When Placebo Works:
We know these principles work because these explain why the placebo works. When the placebo pill works, we can measure the change in respiration, the increased blood flow, the rise in endorphin levels, and the change in blood pressure. In such cases, the patient is relaxed, he knows what the pill is for, how it works; this allows the brain to do its part in healing. When a placebo works, it is like the brain is following the script.
Remember, in healing, relaxation and good sleep is a key to getting well, and not just for sinus problems. Adequate liquids, nutrition, exercise are parts of the taking charge process.
Using the mind this way also means you are “taking charge” of your healing program. This also helps to mobilize your natural immune factors.
Today we have a plague of chronic sinusitis. Maybe soon we will have the vaccines for this, like we do for smallpox. Until we do, let’s use the mind to stay well.