TJ also sent this post, which I will repost below.
Dan
CS>sinus problems
TJ Garland
Thu, 15 May 2003 22:50:05 -0700
I have found it to be AMAZING!!!! Dissolve a teaspoon of Xylitol in 8
oz. of Colloidal silver(or distilled water) and put into an empty
nasal sprayer. The results are instant!!!! Now I can live with two
cats.
TJ Garland, CMO supplier
there are no incurable illnesses-only incurable people.
Normal nasal cleaning is very much like cleaning the kitchen floor.
When the floor is dirty the first thing we do is sweep it. It's the
same with the nose. The broom for the nose are the microscopic hairs
called cilia that protrude from the cells that line our airway. We
also have the benefit of mucus in the nose, like the saw dust or other
chemicals that we sometimes put on floor to trap the dust and other
material we want removed. We normally make about a teaspoon of mucus
every five minutes. The mucus is sticky and traps almost all of the
foreign particles that we breathe. The cilia beat between 8 and 12
times a second and it takes them about 15 minutes to literally sweep
the mucus to the back of the nose where we swallow it. This sweeping
works twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and is usually very
effective. There are, however, some environmental factors that effect
this sweeping:
Dry air and not drinking enough water makes the mucus drier and harder
to clear.
*
Most colds occur in the winter when we dry our air with central
heating and don't have the same urge to drink that we have in the
summer.
*
This is the season for most ear infections as well as colds.
The highest incidence of ear infections in this country, and probably
the world, is in the Native American children in Alaska. Tribal elders
tell us that before these people were "civilized" they did not have
problems with their ears. Part of the civilizing was putting them in
homes instead their traditional houses that were more open to the
elements. The relative humidity in the winter in their traditional
environment is close to 100% while that in a well insulated house is
closer to 30% at best. These people had adapted over the thousands of
years they lived in this climate, and are having trouble with the
newer, nicer, but dryer environment. One of the practices these native
peoples used to have was wrapping their babies warmly and taking them
out into the cold every day. Cold air means that the nose needs a lot
more blood to warm the air, and that means more fluid in the nose that
helps to wash it out. Doctors think that these people get ear
infections because they are genetically disposed to them by the shape
of the Eustachian Canal in the back of the nose. But the same tribal
elders point out that children from the same genetic pool living in a
more traditional environment in Nome's sister city of Provideniya,
Siberia do not have trouble with their ears today. Our doctors say
they are just not diagnosed, but it does not take a doctor to tell
that a screaming child that pulls on his ear or complains of an ear
ache has a problem, especially when it drains a few days later. Tribal
elders usually have more wisdom than we like to acknowledge.
Besides the environmental factors, things that hurt the cilia will
also lead to more problems.
*
Cigarette smoke, even passive smoke from someone else, is toxic to the
cilia. Smokers and their families are only sweeping with half a broom
or less. If there is enough smoke the cilia don't sweep at all. This
is why some pediatricians consider it child abuse for parents to smoke
when their children are around.
The cilia and mucus working together clean out the great majority of
bacteria and other pollutants that enter the nose. When we look at the
back of the nose with a microscope we can see the bacteria caught in
the mucus and riding on top of the cilia. These bacteria are not going
to cause problems. In normal cleaning they are swallowed along with
the mucus and are killed by the acid in our stomachs. In order to
cause infections bacteria must find a place in the back of the nose
where there is no mucus protecting the cells. Even most of these
bacteria are killed by our own antibacterial substances in the airway
surface fluid that bathes these cells.
If we cannot remove the dirt from the kitchen floor with sweeping then
we need to get out the soap and water. It's the same with the nose.
Irritants in the nose, whether they are infectious (viruses and
bacteria) or allergenic, trigger special cells called mast cells.
These cells release granules that contain histamine and an enzyme
called tryptase. The tryptase acts like soap and makes the mucus
thinner. Histamine does four things in the back of the nose:
*
it opens blood vessels in the nose so that they leak ? the water for
this washing.
*
it makes more mucus to trap more of the pollutants.
*
it irritates us so we sneeze more and get rid of it.
*
it causes broncho-constriction that protects the lungs from this pollution.
The fluid, or plasma, comes from under the surface/epithelial cells
than line our nasal passages. This fluid percolates up around these
cells bathing them and winds up under the mucus which it virtually
lifts up and washes out making room for the new clean mucus. It is a
very efficient washing mechanism which we should try to help. Christer
Svensson, a Swedish physician who has extensively researched the role
of histamine in the nose, points out that this is a normal defensive
process.
But researchers in the 1940's weren't interested in defenses. They
found that histamine was associated with a runny nose and that
antihistamines stopped the nose from draining. They sanitized the
snotty nose by turning off its defensive washing. Two things happened
in the early 1970's to promote these problems:
*
Antihistamines and decongestants were made available over the counter
and began to be heavily advertised on television.
*
Entitlement programs like Medicaid made these drugs available to our
poorer populations.
These drugs act to block our normal, but bothersome, nasal cleaning.
Antihistamines block the effects of histamine so the washing never
gets turned on and decongestants close down the blood vessels that
histamine has opened so the water gets turned off. It does not require
a whole lot of training to see that if we stop the washing we will
have more dirt. This is also suggested by the side effect studies of
one of these drugs. Loratadine is a commonly used non-sedating
antihistamine now available without prescription. The study looking
for side effects in children lasted for two weeks and was probably
done in the summer, because few of the children got upper respiratory
infections or noted wheezing. But the incidence of these two problems
was doubled in the group given the drug.
While two weeks is enough time to evaluate the side effects for the
drug, such as dry nose or sedation, it is hardly long enough to see
the side effects of taking the drug for its intended purpose. We have
now had an uncontrolled thirty year trial of what happens when we
block a normal defense and we ought to pay attention.
Our ancestors dealt with a similar problem up until about three
hundred years ago. When we get cut or injured so that bacteria can get
under our skin our immune system recognizes a problem and signals that
more blood is needed to deal with it. This causes the cardinal signs
of inflammation: redness, swelling, pain, and fever. A person who went
to the doctor with these symptoms would usually be bled; their arm
would be cut and allowed to bleed into a bowl until the signs went
away. It was a very effective therapy for the symptoms because loss of
blood leads to shock that is potentially much more serious than
infection ? shock trumps the immune system. The symptoms would rapidly
disappear. But more people treated this way died of infection. And
more people whose immune system is blocked by antihistamines and
decongestants die today from infections that could have been washed
away or from asthma that is triggered by pollutants that could have
been similarly removed.
We need to ask the question posed by evolutionary medicine more often:
Why did this symptom develop and is it defensive; does it help us deal
with environmental insults? If the answer is "Yes" then we ought to
honor rather than block those symptoms.
Return to HOME.
Read about more examples where we block our normal body functions of
fever and diarrhea.
Go on to read about helping clean the nose.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
References:
Am J Rhinol 1998 Jan-Feb;12(1):37-43
Nasal mucosal endorgan hyperresponsiveness.
Svensson C, Andersson M, Greiff L, Persson CG
Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Head & Neck Surgery, University
Hospital, Lund, Sweden.
Nonspecific hyperresponsiveness of the upper and lower airways is a
well-known characteristic of different inflammatory airway diseases
but the underlying mechanisms have not yet been satisfactorily
explained. In attempts to elucidate the relation of
hyperresponsiveness to disease pathophysiology we have particularly
examined the possibility that different airway endorgans may alter
their function in allergic airway disease. The nose, in contrast to
the bronchi, is an accessible part of the airways where in vivo
studies of airway mucosal processes can be carried out in humans under
controlled conditions. Different endorgans can be defined in the
airway mucosa: subepithelial microvessels, epithelium, glands, and
sensory nerves. Techniques may be applied further in the nose to
determine selectively the responses/function of these endorgans.
Topical challenge with methacholine will induce a glandular secretory
response, and topical capsaicin activates sensory c-fibers and induces
nasal smart. Topical histamine induces extravasation of plasma from
the subepithelial microvessels. The plasma exudate first floods the
lamina propria and then moves up between epithelial cells into the
airway lumen. This occurs without any changes in the ultrastructure or
barrier function of the epithelium. We have therefore forwarded the
view of mucosal exudation of bulk plasma as a physiological airway
tissue response with primarily a defense function. Since the exudation
is specific to inflammation, we have also suggested mucosal exudation
as a major inflammatory response among airway endorgan functions.
Using a "nasal pool" device for concomitant provocation with histamine
and lavage of the nasal mucosa we have assessed exudative responses by
analyzing the levels of plasma proteins (e.g., albumin alpha
2-macroglobulin) in the returned lavage fluids. A secretory
hyperresponsiveness occurs in both experimental and seasonal allergic
rhinitis. This type of nasal hyperreactivity may develop already 30
minutes after allergen challenge. It is attenuated by topical steroids
and oral antihistamines. We have demonstrated that exudative
hyperresponsiveness develops in both seasonal allergic rhinitis and
common cold, indicating significant changes of this important
microvascular response in these diseases. An attractive hypothesis to
explain airway hyperresponsiveness has been increased mucosal
absorption permeability due to epithelial damage, possibly secondary
to the release of eosinophil products. However, neither nonspecific
nor specific endorgan hyperresponsiveness in allergic airways may be
explained by epithelial fragility or damage since nasal absorption
permeability (measured with 51CR-EDTA and dDAVP) was decreased or
unchanged in our studies of allergic and virus-induced rhinitis,
respectively. Thus, the absorption barrier of the airway mucosa may
become functionally tighter in chronic eosinophilic inflammation.
Publication Types:
* Review
* Review, tutorial
PMID: 9513658
American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.
The Allergy Report. Vol. 1, page 4.
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