Those who suffer from sinus headaches know that the pressure that builds inside the nasal and sinus cavities make it feel as if your head will explode.
Even moving your head up and down a bit makes it feel like there’s a large mass behind your nose acting as a counterbalance to the rest of your cranium. If you’re prone to sinus headaches and are looking for a solution to your problems, you should consider the following sinus facts before making any treatment decisions.
Making Your Sinuses Worse
If you’re prone to sinus headaches, the last thing you need to do is make yourself more susceptible to repeated sinus problems. One of the worst things you can do to your sinuses is smoking. Using nasal decongestants too frequently also makes it more difficult for your sinuses to stay healthy. If you sense that you’re on the precipice of sinusitis or sinus headaches, you should consider avoiding swimming, SCUBA diving and flying.
While there’s not much you can do about your physiology, the fact of the matter is that those who have deviated septums, nasal polyps, nasal bone spurs or tumors of the face or nose are much more susceptible to sinus headaches, sinus problems and sinusitis.
Cause of Sinus Headaches
Over the past decade, doctors and researchers have begun to understand sinusitis in a different light. Rather than considering it to be strictly a bacterial infection, experts have started to look at the causes of sinusitis and related sinus headaches.
After prescribing antibiotics to treat the condition, and witnessing many patients relapse soon after the course of medicine finished, doctors started to look at the underlying causes and features of sinus problems – specifically, inflammation. As a result, instead of automatically prescribing antibiotics, doctors have started to treat the inflammation through steroid sprays that reduce the swelling in the sinus passageways.
The truth is that sinus headaches may be a result of a viral infection, a bacterial infection or even inflammation cause by some sort of agitation present in the surrounding environment.
Antibiotics work strictly on helping the immune system deal with bacterial infections and do not help with any of the other issues at all. If your doctor is prescribing courses of antibiotics without considering any of the other problems that might be causing your sinus headaches, you should probably consult with another physician.
Are Sinus Headaches Affecting You?
If you constantly suffer from sinus headaches, you should consult an experienced ENT doctor. Delaying treatment can result in surgery becoming necessary to remove chronically infected tissues, such as endoscopic sinus surgery or turbinate reduction.
Contact us today for more information about treating sinus headaches.