Holistic Medicine For Sinus Infections:
6 Natural Remedies That Work FAST
Of all of the worst things that can accompany a cold… a sinus infection has to be near the top. It’s bad enough to be sneezy, drippy & breathing challenged… but add in a headache and that awful pressure behind the eyes and you’ve got a full-on cocktail for misery. If you’ve got children you need to take care of, you’ll probably be grumbling thoughts you wouldn’t dare to admit…
As a mom of 3 whose partner frequently works away- I can solemnly tell you that having to mother small children alone when you’re sick and in pain is HARD. There have been several occasions where all I wanted and needed was to rest, and I sorely wished my own mother was able to come and take care of me instead of having to BE the mom.
… but, Nope. When you’re the mom, you’re still responsible for making sure everyone is safe and fed, no matter how awful you may feel.
So, when we have a sinus infection, we NEED it to clear, FAST! Moms don’t have time to be down and out for long when other little people are depending on us.
You only appreciate how freaking awesome it feels to breathe through your nose once you can’t anymore. When I get a cold, I want to be able to get rid of excess mucous, open up those clogged passages and taste and smell fully again.
Sinus infections aren’t something to fool around with- it wasn’t too long ago that chronic sinus infections could lead to an abscess that was dangerously close to the brain, leading to death. So, obviously we seek out professional help if we’ve tried home remedies and things aren’t improving within a week-to-ten-days.
Not all sinus infections are caused by bacteria, however, and so if it’s a virus or fungal infection, antibiotics won’t help, not to mention the rapid increase of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Bacteria create resistance so quickly (within 48hrs) and share it openly with all other bacterial species, so much so that pharmaceutical companies have all but entirely given up on creating any new ones. They can’t seem to create any new drug that is any more effective than what is currently on the market, and yet as soon as new drugs are used bacteria rapidly create resistance to them.
Antibiotics haven’t been in our medical tool chest for even 100 years. Dr. Fleming, who discovered penicillin was already seeing bacterial resistance by 1945 and warning the scientific community that improper use would lead to the development of resistant bacteria. They didn’t listen.
Humans are now facing the end of antibiotics not even 100 years after their discovery… meaning that very shortly, there will come a time when NO antibiotic will work at all.
Luckily for us, plants have been dealing with bacterial infections throughout their entire evolutionary period as well- and they’re really good at it. Plants out-perform pharmaceuticals on some of the most important levels, possessing attributes no drugs could ever hope to achieve, namely:
1) Their chemistry (in its whole form, not when any one constituent is isolated) is too complex and sophisticated for resistance to occur. Where our man-made antibiotics focus on 1 or a few mechanisms to kill bacteria, plants contain hundreds to thousands of unique compounds that work synergistically.
2) Also, plants (if you have a green thumb or know where to look) are free, available to anyone with the desire to learn and very safe (when properly used). They rarely even present any undesirable side effects, which is in stark contrast to pharmaceuticals which maim and kill millions every year (adverse drug reactions are the fourth leading cause of death in the US).
3) And more so, growing herbs is completely safe for the environment, nay, beneficial for the environment, whereas pharmaceuticals pollute our soil & water which is also a contributing factor to bacterial resistance.
Mark my words (and many experts agree), even the greatest skeptics will be loathe to admit, very shortly, that herbs and natural remedies are our best bet against dealing with our own created problems of bacterial resistance, so we may as well start become adept at using them now.
Here is my protocol for a Sinus Infection:
REST (yes, this is my professional recommendation). If you keep go-go-going when you’ve got an infection, it’s going to take you much longer to get well. Allow your body to pool its resources and direct them to healing rather than trying to carry out our self-imposed activities.
Go on a chicken-soup fast. Just properly made bone broth and well-cooked veggies for a few days. No sugar, no eggs, no dairy until things turn around, and then still no sugar for a while (it lowers white blood cells & feeds the microbes we don’t want to encourage).
Make it steamy. I turn my bathroom into a steam room by having a hot shower with the fan off, putting in the bathtub plug and adding a few drops of essential oils that are known to help cut through phlegm, notably eucalyptus, juniper, and thyme. The steamy air quickly fills with their aroma and it really helps. Then I turn that shower into a bath as per the next step below…
Turn up the heat! If your body doesn’t get a fever on its own, consider temporarily raising your body temperature as it may be helpful in fighting the infection because most bacteria and viruses can only survive in a narrow temperature range. I recommend getting into a nice hot bath and drinking a hot cup of herbal tea or even just hot water, as hot as you can stand it without burning your mouth. Bonus points if your tea contains medicinal herbs that can help induce sweating (diaphoretics). After your bath, wrap yourself into a nice warm housecoat and climb into bed under some thick blankets to sweat it out.
Diaphoretic herbs: As mentioned above, these herbs can promote sweating, and they also help increase peripheral circulation. In Chinese medicine they’re called “Surface-relieving” agents. These herbs are divided into two categories, warming and cooling. If you don’t have a fever and are trying to warm the body, you’ll be going for the warming (stimulating) diaphoretics, such as Angelica, Lovage, Sage, Ginger, or Yarrow (yarrow is actually quite neutral in it’s energetics).
Herbal Nasal Spray: This is my “big guns”. When the above just isn’t working, and I need fast relief, I mix up the following recipe in a 30ml nasal spray bottle:
5-10 drops of Cryptolepis tincture
5-10 drops juniper berry tincture (or 2 single drops of juniper essential oil)
5-10 drops of usnea, dual extracted tincture
5-10 drops of Bidens tincture
Fill up the rest with colloidal silver or distilled water.
Spray up nostrils as often as needed, I notice immediate results after only a couple of sprays and generally don’t need more than 1 spray in each nostril every couple of hours.
And that’s it. That’s all it’s taken to quickly (within a day or two) get back to feeling good, breathing comfortably through my nose again, taste, smell & not have pain.
I was hit with a particularly rough sinus infection while on a ski-trip last winter and I was super grateful that I had pretty much brought a mini-apothecary with us and was able to treat it on the mountain!
Some people also love nasal irrigation with a nettie pot, which is like a mini-tea pot that you pour salt water into one nostril while it comes out the other… but I’ve experimented with it numerous times over the past decade and have come to the conclusion that it just isn’t effective for me, personally.
Did I miss anything? Post your favourite herbal remedies or other natural remedies for sinus infections below :)
