Contributed by: Nanci Baren nancibaren @yahoo.com)
If you got a commission on every medicine sold for a stuffy nose, you'd be very rich. The following alternatives will not make the drug companies wealthy, but they might make you more healthy.
1. Watch your food intake. Stuffy, low fiber foods like meat, white bread and candy at least indirectly contribute to sinus congestion. The simple way to test this natural philosophy is to drop these items from your diet and see if you feel better and breathe easier.
2. Added chemicals in food may cause stuffiness in some people. This means that avoiding artificial colors, artificial flavors, and preservatives might help you. Chemicals have no nutritive value anyway, so why not?
3. My grandfather used to relieve congestion by breathing in the vapors from a jar of freshly-opened horseradish. He also sprinkled cayenne pepper generously on his soup. My daughter eats a lot of hot sauce on her food if she gets stuffy. Kitchen herbal remedies work.
4. There are acupressure points for sinus congestion. Michael Blate's Natural Healers' Acupressure Handbook shows you several.
5. If you look into ayurvedic medicine (the traditional health care of India) you will learn about foods to eat that can ease your breathing. Perfect Health, by Deepak Chopra, M.D. is the very best book to start with. Stuffy sinuses are likely a sign of a "kapha" imbalance.
6. If you had to choose a conventional over-the-counter decongestant, "Vicks Vaporub" (or its generic equivalent) is still the safest, cheapest and best. Most folks massage a bit into their neck or chest, but as kids my brothers and I put a dab in each nostril. The label directions do not recommend this, but we seem to have suffered no harm. "Vicks" is actually a mixture of various herbal extracts including nutmeg, camphor and eucalyptus oils. Similar products are probably just as good.
7. If you have a neti pot from India, use it. If you don't, you can go swimming without nose plugs. Enough water will passively enter your nose to rinse it clean. Not to be TOO gross, but did you ever notice how easy it is to blow your nose after swimming? Humidity in general helps, of course. No pool handy? Even a hot shower might help.
8. Naturopaths prefer to get at the causes rather than just deal with symptoms. For this reason, we maintain that periodic vegetable juice fasting is the overall best approach. It seems hard to believe, but sinus congestion is virtually nonexistent when you juice a lot and eat right.
9. Take lots of vitamin C. Says one reader:
"Six weeks ago I was pretty much at the end of my rope with sinus problems. After 2 sinus surgeries, 2 years of allergy shots, and enough cortisone sprays, antihistimines, decongestants, and antibiotics to sink a battleship, I was facing the prospect of trying yet another surgery or spending half of my life on antibiotics. I had also tried about a million different alternative therapies with no real success. Then I found your website. I had successfully used vitamin C powder many years ago when I had a pesky recurring bladder infection, so I launched this new attack with great hope. The payoff has been nothing short of spectacular and I feel like I have my life back. This is the first time in about 10 years that my sinuses have felt perfectly normal."
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