Advice needed for sinus problem

[chrisw]

Need your input on my sinus flareup.

At the start of July, I started getting a bad smell in my right
nostril. I have these quite often and usually goes away after a while.
This time it did not and the smell progressed to a bad blood taste of
sorts. Then by the middle of July, I started getting thick gooey,
jelly-like clear mucus from my nose which has a hard time coming out
and usually only comes once a day.

Now almost two months later things have not improved. The bad smell is
gone and bad taste is hardly noticeable. But for the past few weeks, I
have been getting thick, sticky post-nasal drip which I have a hard
time hacking out. Occasionally the postnasal mucus has yellow bits but
mostly is clear and the jelly-like mucus in my nose sometimes tinged
in yellow persists. My throat has become very irritated as well and
nose also is very congested.

I have been irrigating using the Neilmed netipot once or twice,
sometimes three times a day. I have been using Flunisolide nasal spray
twice daily.

From the description of my symptoms, particularly the jelly-like
mucus, do I have an infection or is it post-infection inflammation? I
have resisted taking antibiotics because they cause intestinal upsets
with me. Should I consider starting a course? I would like to wait
things out and see if it improves. Is this advisable?

[Shirley ann]

My MD says I get imflammed in the throat and sinus area. To use saline
rinses and rhinocort nasal spray. Do not take my allergy meds until it
clears up.

I did not have an infection but was having a lot of congestion and my
eyes were imflammed too..

shirleyann

[chrisw]

Hi Shirley Ann,

Have you ever had jelly-like slimy mucus from your nose?

[truehawk]

Post by chrisw
Hi Shirley Ann,
Have you ever had jelly-like slimy mucus from your nose?

Look up "biofilm sinusitis" in http://www.pubmed.gov

You likely have a biofilm sinus infection now, and the longer you keep
it the more
complex and resistant it becomes.

Treat it now, treat is hard, or you will be treating it for the rest
of your life.

Staph produces an enzyme that allows it to spread the walls of
blood cells to make them weep blood and uses an enzyme called
coagulese to convert
fibernectin from your blood plasma to fibrin, that clear
insoluible springy mucus, at practically no metabolic cost.

Staph also produces an enzyme that destroys trans membrane
conductance factor, so it upsets the osmotic
balance of epitihieal cells in a way that leads to less fluid to
washaway the mucus.
Tea washes and Mupricin,and canada balsam washes are somewhat
effective in
reducing the biofilm's footprint.

Also the there is help in Georgia if the Soviets don't wreck it.
In Trabliz they refined and have used Lysic phages
(viruses) to kill staph for the last 50 years. They are able to kill
resistant bugs that no one else can touch.

Also their are foods that confuse the bugs and or kill fungus.
Try diet rich in mustard greens, olive oil and garlic, cinnamon and
grapefruit juice.

[truehawk]

Post by chrisw
Hi Shirley Ann,
Have you ever had jelly-like slimy mucus from your nose?

Look up "biofilm sinusitis" inhttp://www.pubmed.gov
You likely have a biofilm sinus infection now, and the longer you keep
it the more
complex and resistant it becomes.
Treat it now, treat is hard, or you will be treating it for the rest
of your life.
Staph produces an enzyme that allows it to spread the walls of
blood cells to make them weep blood and uses an enzyme called
coagulese to convert
fibernectin from your blood plasma to fibrin, that clear
insoluible springy mucus, at practically no metabolic cost.
Staph also produces an enzyme that destroys trans membrane
conductance factor, so it upsets the osmotic
balance of epitihieal cells in a way that leads to less fluid to
washaway the mucus.
Tea washes and Mupricin,and canada balsam washes are somewhat
effective in
reducing the biofilm's footprint.
Also the there is help in Georgia if the Soviets don't wreck it.
In Trabliz they refined and have used Lysic phages
(viruses) to kill staph for the last 50 years. They are able to kill
resistant bugs that no one else can touch.
Also their are foods that confuse the bugs and or kill fungus.
Try diet rich in mustard greens, olive oil and garlic, cinnamon and
grapefruit juice.

You may also be experiencing painful heartburn and nausa.
Staph produces a toxin that causes "emmisis in the primate model".
Try using the antacid of your choice (Tums, Pepcid Complete). Don't
swallow it, use it as a throat lozenge.
It will help drag the goo out of your head.
The bugs want iron, but they are very attracted to calcium, magnesium,
bismuth, and boron.
Also using chewable C as a throat lozenge helps expidite the leaving
of the goo.

[chrisw]

You've really got me worried about the biofilm infection. You seem
very knowledgeable. What's the best antibiotic for treating this
infection? And how long to continue taking the antibiotic?

I have seen a respiratory physician who scoped up my nose and said it
was very inflamed but could not see any infection. He prescribed me
Flunisolide + Tobramycin nasal spray which he assured me will get rid
of this thing. The thing is, the slimy jelly-like mucus is usually
clear and not yellow or green.

I'm not experiencing any heartburn or nausea as far a I know.

[chrisw]

Would Roxithromycin (Rulide over here in Australia) be effective in
this case?

[truehawk]

Post by chrisw
Would Roxithromycin (Rulide over here in Australia) be effective in
this case?

The fibrin mucus that staph produces from your blood plasma as it
dines is clear shinny, highly elastic, and insoluble. Does that ring a
bell?

Biofilms contain a combination of compatible species. The most common
that produce the kind of mucus that you describe are staph, e. coli
types, and actinomycetes. Once those form a sticky mass, fungus may
move in, if you happen to run into the spores of a variety that can
tolerate body temperatures. Most fungi depend on a lot of proteins
that are not stable at higher temperatures, but the longer you keep
the biofilm the greater the chance that you will run into a cultivar
that can.

The reason that sinus infections become chronic is because bacteria in
the biofilm are 100 to 1000 times more resistant to antibiotics than
the same bacteria when it is in it's free swimming (planktonic) form,
because each microbiota kingdom and genus represented require a
different kind of antibiotic, and because a certain group of cells in
the film called presistor cells go into a kind of suspended
animination where they barely exhibit metabolic processes for weeks at
a time. In this state they are very hard to kill with anibiotics that
interfere with protein synthesis like the 'cillians , or those that
interfere with bacterial energy metabolism, because they are just shut
down. To be effective, Antibiotic/antifungal treatment has to be
continued long enough to be there when the presistors resume
operation, otherwise the whole thing just comes back.
There is some data to suggest that the antibiotics are even more
effective if they are used at pulsed intervals (used for 4 days in a
row in a week.) rather than continously.


Roxithromycin, might work, the name makes it sound like a macrolide
antibiotic , In subclinical doses macrolide antibiotics have been
shown to down-regulates the goo production. along with an antifungal
it is a start. The antibiotic regimes necessary to really cut the
footprint of the stuff down are LONG. 4 to 6 weeks at a minimum. The
outright kill might work, but it is usually ineffective or too hard on
the host(you). About the best you can do is use a bactrostatic dose
for long enough for the tissue that it is attached to slough off.

Washing your sinuses out with the strongest tea you can manage to make
(with a bit of lemon sea salt added), helps a lot. as does the
antiacid to get the stuff where you can suck it out the back of your
throat and spit it out.
The bugs may be of several different kingdoms from fungi to
actinomycetes, but they all use either an amyloid attachment strategy,
or an alginate based attachment stratgey. Get rid of the attachment
and you get rid of them no matter what their antibiotic sensitivity
profile is.

The Otorhinolayrngology group over at the The University of Adelaide
is doing research on biofilms and it would probably be a good idea to
consult them or call them and get a referral to someone close to you
that has a clue about biofilms.

[chrisw]

Thanks. I think I will try Zithromax for 10 days and see how it goes.

Is washing your sinuses with tea safe? This is the first time I've
heard about this.

[truehawk]

Post by chrisw
Thanks. I think I will try Zithromax for 10 days and see how it goes.
Is washing your sinuses with tea safe? This is the first time I've
heard about this.

Ask your doc.

[chrisw]

I had a sample of my hawked up sputum (a jelly glob) analyzed by
pathology but they did not find any bacterial infection. Does this
sound strange? I did keep it in the fridge for half-a-day if that
means anything. I was therefore not given any antibiotics by the doc.

[truehawk]

Post by chrisw
I had a sample of my hawked up sputum (a jelly glob) analyzed by
pathology but they did not find any bacterial infection. Does this
sound strange? I did keep it in the fridge for half-a-day if that
means anything. I was therefore not given any antibiotics by the doc.

The number of bacteria that can be cultured is very limited. They can
not culture 99% of the microbiota out there.
I have tried to find the false positive/false negative rate for the
cultures that they CAN do.
The only data that I was able to find was a study by John's Hopkins on
detecting people carrying MRSA by culture.
They reported that they had to culture 3 times to get one positive
from people that they already knew to be positive, so they were
setting up a program to culture three times.
That indicates a false negative rate of 66%. I started to do some
REAL research when I had a similar experience myself.

http://cmr.asm.org/cgi/reprint/9/1/18.pdf

[chrisw]

Could the thick jelly mucus be just from inflammation rather than
biofilm bacterial waste?

I described the thick jelly mucus to my respiratory/allergy physician
and he didn't seem too bothered by it and advised me to just keep
using the steroid/antibiotic nasal spray. He was adamant that I don't
take oral antibiotics.

I'm having trouble getting someone to prescribe antibiotics. Is my
next stop the ENT again? I had a sinus CT back in 2006 which was
clear. While I did not have this thick jelly mucus back then, they
were also reluctant to give me antibiotics at that time.

Chris

[Michael]

Post by chrisw
Could the thick jelly mucus be just from inflammation rather than
biofilm bacterial waste?
I described the thick jelly mucus to my respiratory/allergy physician
and he didn't seem too bothered by it and advised me to just keep
using the steroid/antibiotic nasal spray. He was adamant that I don't
take oral antibiotics.
I'm having trouble getting someone to prescribe antibiotics. Is my
next stop the ENT again? I had a sinus CT back in 2006 which was
clear. While I did not have this thick jelly mucus back then, they
were also reluctant to give me antibiotics at that time.
Chris

Could the thick jelly mucus be just from inflammation rather than
biofilm bacterial waste?

Does the quantity of thick gell mucous decrease with taking an
antibiotic? That gives you one answer. Certainly it is a good medium
for incubating bacteria and causing inflammation and continuing the
vicious cycle. Have you discussed with your physician the possibility
of taking low dose long term macrolides -- there is a great deal
written about this in prior posts if you search, including journal
articles and abstracts -- some here have certainly found them to be
helpful in reducing inflammation and secretion.

The only way you are going to get any type of meaningful answer about
the presence of bacteria is not from a standard pathology lab
(dedicated though it might be, they are not going to try growing
samples long term in varying conditions on different media etc.) but
from a research institution who have the capacity to do a form of
analysis called ''real time pcr" on the film as it lies on the
surface of the cavities -- and even then you might very well get the
answer that you do have something but we can't tell you precisely
what it is but probably it has these, these and these
characteristics. Bacteria may be single cell but they are incredibly
sophisticated in the forms they take, the proteins they express, the
toxins the produce etc. -- for example the same molecule may fold in
three dimensional space in two or three different ways dependent on
its concentration and environmental ph and therefore affect its
receptor differently and consequently impact the behavior of the whole
bacterial colony.

As Truehawk may have said already the standard way bacteria grow in
systems is as compound biofilms -- the assumption that bacteria were
single, uniform and planctonic was of fundamental importance in
establishing bacteriology as a research discipline and produced many
life saving medications -- however these conceptual assumptions, that
for near a century produced effective treatments for a large number
of diseases, do not model the way bacteria actually behave in systems
and in humans can cause various long term or chronic diseases. Its
only in the past 20 years that the way bacteria 'talk' to each other
both between species and inter-species and change their behavior as a
result of these chemical messengers has begun to be elucidated and
primary discoveries are occurring month by month, alas most of these
will not produce immediate treatment possibilities; its a long road.

Very probably the teaching your physician received was based on the
single cell uniform planctonic model of bacteria -- and he has
achieved many but not 100% treatment successes applying that model
unconsciously -- its not his fault, nor the fault of his teachers;
primary research takes a long time to generate certainties and
adequate generalizations that can sift down to form doctrine for
undergraduate or equivalent teaching. What is known now is that
biofilms have been observed in a significant number of cases that are
called 'chronic sinusitis' -- that for various reasons they are dam
difficult to shift with simple chemotherapeutic agents -- that so far
one of the more effective methods to gradually move them is using some
Johnson's baby shampoo in the lavage (if you want to be posh you call
it zwiterionic surfactants). And if its any consolation your
physician, despite a great deal of training, and provided you have had
a full work up of your immune system, is in the end as much in the
dark as are you or any primary research scientist -- Johns Hopkins a
few years ago now crunched the proteins involved in the mucous of
sinusitis patients and found that there were so many involved that you
could not hope to generate a series of simple generalizations as an
answer. Your physician is just going along with the practical
experience of what has been helpful for the majority of patents in
the past and that might help you but on the other hand ...

Michael

[chrisw]

I took some Sudafed (with pseudoephedrine) a few weeks ago and it
seemed to reduce the thick mucus quite a bit. My sense of smell which
has not been good for a number of years also improved quite a bit. My
doc and allergy/respiratory physician are against prescribing me
antibiotics and also against me taking Sudafed for it's systemic
effects. Any thoughts on taking Sudafed for say one-week at a time
with one-week off in between?

[truehawk]

Post by chrisw
I took some Sudafed (with pseudoephedrine) a few weeks ago and it
seemed to reduce the thick mucus quite a bit. My sense of smell which
has not been good for a number of years also improved quite a bit. My
doc and allergy/respiratory physician are against prescribing me
antibiotics and also against me taking Sudafed for it's systemic
effects. Any thoughts on taking Sudafed for say one-week at a time
with one-week off in between?

Suck on an antiacid for a half an hour, don't swallow and tell me what
happens.

[Michael]

Any thoughts on taking Sudafed for say one-week at a time with one-
week off in between?

Thats something you should discuss with your "doc and allergy/
respiratory physician" who are "against me taking Sudafed for it's
systemic effects." They may have valid reasons for their prohibition.

Michael

[chrisw]

Post by truehawk
Suck on an antiacid for a half an hour, don't swallow and tell me what
happens.

I did the antacid at the back of my tongue for 40 minutes and didn't
seem to notice anything different.

[truehawk]

Post by chrisw

Post by truehawk
Suck on an antiacid for a half an hour, don't swallow and tell me what
happens.

I did the antacid at the back of my tongue for 40 minutes and didn't
seem to notice anything different.

Well that's is a good thing. I guess.
But it means that I don't really know what to do for you, since my goo
will come down to chase metals, iron, calcium, boron, etc, and is
hydrolyzed by tannins among other things.
Your goo is produced by different bugs, or it is far farword, or
both.

I think that the best thing would be to try a round of the different
irrigations, and to Michael's list I would add water of mustard
greens, grapefruit juice, canada balsam hair conditioner (contains
canada balsam, citric acid and EDTA), and sodium nitrite, and IN SMALL
AMOUNTS AND WORK UP and just see what works. Antifungal ointments
such as turbinfina applied up and back with a fine tip pipette also
can be very helpful.

None of these things is going to hurt the cilia that you still have.

[i***@gmail.com]

Yes please helps

[Steven L.]

Post by chrisw
From the description of my symptoms, particularly the jelly-like
mucus, do I have an infection or is it post-infection inflammation? I
have resisted taking antibiotics because they cause intestinal upsets
with me. Should I consider starting a course? I would like to wait
things out and see if it improves. Is this advisable?

Obviously you need to see a physician. Before anything else, you need
an accurate diagnosis as to just what is going on inside your nose. We
certainly can't diagnose you from here; you need to be thoroughly examined.