Whatever I Feel Like

I think I’m getting closer to a solution for my sinus/allergy problems. Last month, I saw all sorts of doctors and got all kinds of medication that ended up making me feel like a zombie. I knew I couldn’t continue like that and be able to function in my life, but I also knew that without the meds, I was miserable, too. It was a Catch-22: to keep trying different combinations of meds to feel better or to not take any meds and suffer the symptoms of the sinus and allergy problems. I was complaining to my sponsor about all this last week and she told me (for the second time, I realized) that she tried a neti pot and all of her sinus problems went away.

I knew before we even got off the phone that I would be heading to the store that day to get one for myself, even though I wasn’t really sure what the neti pot was or did. This thing is kind of funny, I mean, just watch the demo video.

Tell me that’s not comical. I didn’t care how funny it was to put a gravy boat filled with salt water in one nostril to let the water flow out of the other one, I wanted relief!

So I got the neti pot, and I began using it right away. The first night, I did indeed experience immediate relief. I was able to breathe without any signs of congestion and I felt like my head had not been more clear in years. In good addict fashion, I decided I would do the neti pot as many times as possible. The book (yes, I bought a book, too) says you can do it twice a day or more often if needed. I thought I’d do it three times a day just to be on the safe side. I also have found different supplements you can add to the water and I thought I’d go find as many of those as possible. Well I must have went overboard in addition to probably tilting my head in the wrong direction because yesterday I ended up in excruciating pain from the sensation of water/pressure in my ears. D’oh! Last night I took an over-the-counter decongestant in hopes of drying my ears out and it worked.

Now I’m just striving for some balance. I would really like to not take any medication at all, but I can’t be so black & white with that thinking. If I need medication, it’s there for me. I just wanted to be one of those people who could say, “I used to take all sorts of medication and then I started using the neti pot and I haven’t taken one iota of medicine since!” I also can’t be doing the neti every hour on the hour, apparently. I’m going to scale it back to 1-2 days per day – or as needed. I really am kind of scared about getting that water pressure in my ears again, so I need to work on my posture, I guess. I also read that I have to be careful when I blow the water out when I’m done – doing it improperly can cause the water to blow into my Eustachian tubes. Maybe that is what I did wrong. Who knows.

Overall, I’m very impressed with the neti pot and I’m relieved to have found it. Now if they only sold balance at the stores, I’d go clean them out.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 12th, 2007 at 7:47 am and is filed under Mundane. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.