subject: How To Prevent Sinus Infections - Nurse's Guide [print this page] If you're getting sinus infections or other sinus problems over and over again you want to make sure you're aware of all the possible causes so you can start preventing them. I used to suffer from sinusitis (inflammation) including infections and other sinus issues until I made a lot of changes in my life.
One of the first things to do is to completely evaluate the environment you're living in including your apartment, house or other living situation and your work or school environment.
Take a look around and try to see what might be floating around in the air that you're breathing and causing your sinus symptoms. In your home you know there is going to be dust. The dust can contain dust mite droppings, which are highly allergic for some people and is a common allergen and/or it will likely include mold spores (fungus), which is the most common cause of sinus infections and is not bacteria as many people believe.
Do you have house plants where mold is likely to grow? Take a look in your bathroom around the toilet-- get your head down there and look up and around. Take a look around the window sills and bathtub. The mold you see should be completely removed while wearing a mask so you don't disturb the spores and allow them to travel up into your sinuses.
Take a look around kitchen window sills and under the sink. You want to remove any mold there you see too. Maybe you have mold in the basement or other areas that you don't enter often and the spores drift into your living areas. It's important to remove these mold areas too.
In the air that you breathe you may also find fumes from chemicals and smoke from cigarettes. If you live or work in an environment that has air permeated with these chemical fumes, your sinus mucous membranes will swell and block the normal sinus drainage that must move through each day.
If you or someone smokes in your household or you're exposed to sawdust or dust in a home workshop or garage or sorting through boxes or just dusting your furniture, you could be exposing your sinuses to the particles it doesn't like.
When this happens you'll have a back-up that is likely to cause sinus symptoms such as a sinus headache, stuffy or congested nose or nasal passages, slightly sore throat, runny nose, cough, fatigue or worn out feeling and lead to a sinus infection often indicated by yellow mucous. You may have one or all of these symptoms and there are a number of other symptoms too.
If this happens often you may end up having chronic sinus infections and you'll want to prevent these infections from happening and seek natural treatment not antibiotics or sinus medications, which don't work. So take a look around your environment for possible causes to these ongoing sinus infections. There are a few other causes but too much to cover in this short article.
