"Inspiration" difficulties? Breathing as we're 'Used to' MIGHT not be 'Right'!

I'm going to write a little bit about breathing --- from the obvious such as what we see in ads called "Breathe Right Strips" and the products for mucus, advertised by name brand "Mucinex" (which are available by companies in a house/generic that is much cheaper) to things I only learned of the last couple of years and are relatively obscure: Ever hear of osteopaths and dentists that go to The Cranial Academy? They study the huge area that was distilled down and marketed as "Cranial Sacral Therapy", which many people have now heard of.  But it's a WHOLE different thing: they actually will advise against CST as it's such an incomplete form of the real, base 'work'.  Since I was actually very thin as a child and young adult, and usually am a normal weight, with occasional cycles of unexplained weight gain which I'm hopefully getting to the bottom of now, I never suspected that I was having problems with breathing related to sleep, or the lack thereof.  Within the last year, I've had MY light of knowledge shine on something I'd not studied before and I'm swinging my hammer at it (see the Chris Young video snippet about that analogy -- it's a good "law" he brings to us to learn from.)  

Naturally, this is a case of opinions and that what Lumigrate is about: Teaching people EVERYTHING presented as fact has 'opinion' as a great part of it.  Sometimes things are believed and unproven for so long they maybe are truly 'fact'.  It's up to each person to investigate information and decide what 'fits' for them -- there are a variety of ways to do that, but I highly recommend getting centered with yourself and being able to listen to the wise guide inside of yourself.  YOU are the center of your health care at Lumigrate, we even built our home page model with that in mind (with all the providers are the YOU). 

The older I've gotten, the more I've seen things presented as 'fact' turn out later to be disproven.  What causes gastric ulcers for one thing; aspirin therapy more recently is another (I've not covered that here as I couldn't attend the seminar about it but it was by a big expert out of CU Medical Center and aspirin has some 'problems' apparently; however, it goes through my head that "are other drugs that are costly behind this research and 'push' and is it valid research?"   

The inspiration (pun intended) for this comes from a most interesting conversation I had with a woman this weekend while tending the booth for a health service organization I am a member of (CHI, Collective Health Initiatives) at a health event for the Fruita Community/Recreation Center's grand opening.  I intentionally volunteered for the noon to 2 pm timeframe as the event went with The Sweetheart Run, which was to have 200 runners; I'd called in the morning and heard they had 375 runners and it was quite a 'madhouse'. 

Not only do I not sleep well sometimes, with morning being when I'm finally getting some restorative sleep, I don't deal well with distractions and noisey environments for conversations, just part of the 'fibromyalgia experience' I believe.  I leave the more intact brains and bodies to the madhouse hours and volunteer for the easier hours of events. However, I'd wished I'd been there because the gym was very open and there was good lighting, so it actually was a really nice venue, even when busy.  Not all are!  What a fortunate community to have this wonderful addition! And this one conversation alone made it worthwhile to ME to have volunteered! They were actually ALL good conversations, it was a really wonderful event.

When I arrived, the gym was fairly quiet, with a few handfulls of people milling around gathering information. I settled in and 'met' and talked with the CHI member who had been there from 10 to noon, which was a most interesting conversation, as we've 'overlapped' for a long time but have never had a conversation. Even within organizations it takes a while to get to know people -- years sometimes!  We handed off the information about the booth and I was ready to talk to folks coming around.

A couple of nice 'senior' women approached the table.  One of the women inspired me to write something new to go along with things I'd written previously about sleep apnea and sleep (which are found in two different and neighboring Forums on Lumigrate, so please find them as well if you're interested.  You can go 'up' from here by using the links which appear before the title of this Topic and return to Forums and then scroll down to find forums on Sleep and Sleep Apnea). 

"I'm totally healthy -- I'm 70 and take no medications" she said, full of pride. And she looked healthy -- I hope I am doing so well in 20 years! "The only problem I have is I wake up in the morning with all this stuff in the back of my throat" (and my mind went to strategies about sinus 'maintenance', which are right up my alley as an occupational therapist, such as sinus rinsing or suggesting they ask an appropriate 'team' member, such as a pharmacist, physician (medical, naturopathic, osteopathic), or homeopath about taking guaifenesin, the expectorant which comes in pill form over the counter. (Brand name you see advertised is "Mucinex").  Interestingly, the woman didn't identify that as 'sinus' since it wasn't coming out her nose but she quickly understood that the sinuses draining into the back of the throat was sounding like what she had going on. 

"I went on a family trip recently and shared a room with my daughter, who said "Mom, you make horrible noises in your sleep, and you quit breathing even" she went on to say.  WOW, now that's serious, serious stuff, which puts a strain on the cardiovascular system, can lead to all kinds of health issues from the interruption of restorative sleep.  I'd put some information on Lumigrate about these sleep apnea in the past year, after attending two very good continuing education conferences at the regional medical center.  But I hadn't put anything on Lumigrate about sinus rinsing previously, or guaifenesen for thinning the mucus so it drains better if you have poorly designed sinuses, as I believe I have.  Again, I'll find out more later this week about that and will report back here to continue the education for others.   

The woman was VERY open to information and really appreciative of the collection of health providers represented by the table I was representing. I hope she goes to the Collective Health Initiatives website and finds information on providers who can continue her health process -- there are about as many different directions as there are providers, with over 200 now and formal processes completed for becoming a nonprofit trade association.  She'd signed up for a low cost chiropractic assessment with a chiropractor across the gym from our booth, which was a good step based upon her upper neck having had an adjustment while in yoga when the instructor was giving her some hands on positioning -- this has a part to play in what goes on inside the cranium and even can impact balance and the vestibular system I recently learned from a chiropractor.

I directed her toward the list I had printed up from Lumigrate titled Mardy's List, which has the providers I refer patients with fibromyalgia to, because if they can help complex patients they can also help what ails most other people.  The chiropractor I'd learned about the C1/C2 ("atlas/axis") affect on vestibular is on the list. (He's added a comment, below, after I posted this and told him about it.)   I maintain that fibromyalgia is a bad case of what many other people have developing and which early detection and intervention is beneficial to avoiding it progressing into what is "fibromyalgia". 

When I think back to all the signs and symptoms I had that I now know were signs of things being awry, I wish I or my health providers knew and knew what to do.  Back when I was just not sleeping well and had tight shoulders, could I have changed all the things then I've done over the years since my health got bad enough to be deemed 'fibromyalgia'?  Back when I was a child and not sleeping well, had my dentist(s) known of the things my NEW this week dentist knows about and treats, could that have been a big contributing factor and it wasn't 'just' mercury in immunizations and a lot of secondhand smoke and a "differently functional" home?  So here I am at 50 just finding something HUGE about the head and sleep in the past few months and talking with someone much older who just had a lightbulb go on for her with this conversation, one which I hope will help her have even better health than she thought prior to the conversaton! 

Sleep is an incredible 'barometer' of what is going on with people, but if a person does not have a sleep partner they don't know what is going on!  However, about this time of year seven years ago my new primary care physician prompted me to ask my sleep partner about anything he noticed when I was sleeping and he had just never mentioned that I twitched every 30 seconds for the first stretch after I fell asleep!  I thought back and realized many years ago my husband had said that he thought I was dead once as I was breathing so shallowly and randomly. 

Goodness, how I wish I'd knows back then it was indicative of something and what I know now about what that meant was going on and what to do about it!  And now that I do, I'm so grateful to have a platform like Lumigrate to educate others from! We also have NEW incoming providers of testing services related to sleep, I've focused on sleep a great deal lately for developing content on Lumigrate. So check back frequently as we're adding some important new things frequently. 

Related to the upper neck, it can have an impact on the cranial vault. In the past, I'd had vertigo every spring and fall and worked in a PT clinic where a PT specialized in the Epley Maneuver had always very easily corrected things from her/ that perspective.  But I'd always wondered what set it off at those points in the year; I suspected a connection to slight allergies to pollens.  And in recent years it had not happened; I don't know for sure, but it went hand in hand with when I went on biologically identical hormone supplementation and the 'laxity' of my connective tissues improved and everything related to my body staying in alignment improved. I continue to have seasonal allergies, and as I learn of new products and interventions/services, I'll come back and update. 

Unfortunately, I went off of hormones last year and for a while did fine and I thought 'hah, I guess I wasn't needing those after all or anymore or something' and then it was like Bambi and Godzilla and I got 'whammed' and resumed hormone therapy.  Within a couple of months everything was 'as good as it gets' for me, which is an acceptable level where I function well -- I can lead a pretty normal life, even hike and take car trips and go visit people, get on airplanes and sleep in strange/hard beds, etc..  Again, there are so many interrelated components of the body there truly ends up being many threads which weave together to create wellness.  There are different ways of going about it, and there's room for many providers and opinions. Something which 'is the truth' for one person, might not be what another person needs at all!  And most 'entertainingly' (eye roll),  things each person needs vary from time to time as well!  

That's why I appreciate the types of providers represented here at Lumigrate, as they tend to think along these lines and not the way allopathic/western medicine typically has.  I hope altnerative thinking has an impact on that over time; since the providers and products cost less, it's actually increasing in popularity, which coincides with many figuring out the 'downside' of the pharmaceutical industry's bathing our prescribing providers with so many products they push, with the country overall getting less well. Not that ALL presciption medications are not warranted, they definitely ARE part of 'integrative medicine', but figuring out the underlying cause of a condition and fixing that from a functional standpoint is where the focus is, not maintaining someone on a medication they wouldn't need if the problem were corrected/solved. 

So some of the suggestions I made in general to this woman was to consider different providers within the same discipline; at this health event she got at least two DC's names, and has an appointment with one that was set up at the event.  I told her about the only dentist in the Valley who focuses solely on the cranial vault and briefly discussed how the jaw and neck might be playing off each other based upon what I have learned so far about this -- and the link for the website related to this type of work is below.  

I have much the same history she reported when we talked more -- been referred to ENTs in the past who had their invasive things or expensive tests and it just isn't something we "vibed with", so to speak. But in addition to saying 'if you get more than 2 or 3 sinus infections a year, you likely need surgery and a CT scan of the sinuses is the next step', they told me about something which has made a huge difference in my sinus health.  NeilMed Sinus Rinse, which is available now at about any pharmacy that I've been to (sometimes it used to be behind the counter but lately it's so popular it's out on the shelves).  Not sinus saline 'spray', but a big soft plastic bottle which holds many ounces of warm saline you flush with.  This is nspired by the neti pot, which is available in health food stores as well as a light, unbreakable plastic version the NeilMed company now makes as well.  Walgreens even has a house brand now, but I find it not well buffered and then I won't use it as much as I 'should'/like to. For $3.99 you can buy a bottle with five packets and go from there; I prefer saline packets from Natural Grocers (previously Vitamin Cottage).  Their link is on the Products tab at Lumigrate currently and they have a really nice online ordering process I am told, for those who aren't in Colorado or their new areas where stores are growing. 

I purchase guaifenesen from Kroger or Walgreens as they have house brands they put on sale for up to 50% off, but I used to get it at Sams when I had a membership there; the brand name is Mucinex.  Be sure to notice there are some that are just guia and others have decongestants which is a WHOLE different thing than the very benign/innocuous guaifenesen. 

I don't doubt that my sinuses have less than optimal structure; I've had chronic sinus problems for 15 years now.  And when I saw Jim Kennedy, DDS, the local expert on TMJ and cranial vault issues related to breathing and sleep present at Continuing Education for medical providers about pediatric breathing/sleep problems, I saw some similarities with myself and other people with fibromyalgia that I'd always wondered 'why', such as the head forward posture.  Wow, what if the "bulging" disks in my neck are secondary to holding my head in a way to compensate for structural issues of the sinuses that impaired breathing!  What if the breathing is the first piece in the cascade of stressors that leads to fibromyalgia after 10 or 35 years, in my case. 

Again, I'll come back and share what I find out at the dentist this week, but I  think what happens is I'm not breathing well when sleeping and get stressed and then extend my neck as well as clench my teeth, which potentially damages teeth and puts the atlas/axis (top vertebrae in the cervical/neck area) out of alignment. Unfortunately my previous dentist didn't tell me my teeth are of a design that can break from the force so didn't recommend a bite gurard until AFTER finding a tooth which needed a crown supposedly.  On that, I was going to get a second opinion because it sure seemed like instead of selling me on a $100 oral appliance for prevention there was an eager 'I can do a crown for $900'.  It's principle to not give more money to providers who don't help you preventively.  

Overall, it's simply my ongoing quest to find the root of problems and fix them rather than just put a band aid on the resultant wound.  I've been going to chiropractics since I was 15 .... that's 35 years now!  Perhaps shifting some of those resources of time, energy and money to remediate whatever my jaw/mouth is doing will, in the long run, reduce my health care bills and increase my health and well-being. I used to pay $3/pill for Lunesta, that's over $1,000 a year but was imperative to getting sleep and restoring my health. Sadly, in retrospect, I've known of this very unique, 'niche' dentist for about five years but I was so invested in doing many other things which were having good results that I didn't add THAT to my plate/palate too ... AND many of the providers I went to knew of him and they didn't mention it, PROVING that even when you're going to really GOOD providers and how a LOT about things, YOU might be the only one that will know what the next 'right step' is for you.  There's only so many resources of time, energy and money we all have to work within.  I wish I had, though, because when I did medication reductions last year .. a wonderful goal I met in 2010 ... I went back to some of my less than 'serene' sleep and potentially damaged my teeth. As the legendary Maya Angelou says, "When you know better, you do better."

I hope this adds a very practical aspect to what can be done for this common problem -- sinus congestion is likely a continuum like everything else, from something needing a rinsing or other simple and non medicinal routes, to what I've brought up about the mouth/jaw being aligned for better breathing.  Additionally, it is winter here.  Staying hydrated by proper water consumption (half an ounce per pound of body weight) and adding humidity safely to the air is another consideration to be made. 

All the other things related to nutrition and rest and exercise, etc., naturally apply.  Your overall lifestyle has so much to do with the state of your health.  And I also have to say that the healthiest I was in my 'unhealthy years' was the year I lived near a sushi bar and had that 2 nights a week for dinner.  NOT that eating raw fish is the trick necessarily, that actually has some drawbacks, but the wasabi/horseradish flushing out the sinuses I have always thought was a benefit side effect to a low calorie 'light' dinner. Also, finding out about food allergies and eating differently makes a tremendous difference with my sinuses and breathing overall as well, from my experience (see our free video for a full hour-long seminar by Naturopathic Doctor, Christopher Lepisto about food allergies).  

 For information and to find a provider near you related to cranial vault work, www.cranialacademy.org

Note from the fall of 2011: I just happened to have a regular appointment with Dr Spector this week and woke up feeling awful -- allergies in the fall really slam me as I had said, above.  She suggested quercitin, a supplement that I found at VitaminCottage/Natural Grocers (see Products tab) and Xlear - Xyliton Sinus Nasal Spray. That brand also makes a sinus rinse in packets that has xlitol in it as well and I like it better than NeilMed, which I talk about, above. Her instructions to me for the supplement were a bit different than the bottle says, which was to take two-three a day (500 mg) between meals (not within a half hour before or 1 hour after). She said if I find one that has bromelain in it, that's fine but not to seek it out necessarily; I found Jarrow Forumalas had 500 mg capsules and have been amazed at the results of these two things.  Hope this helps YOU if you have seasonal allergies.  Remember, pay it forward/tell others, that's how YOU can be part of health care reform! ~~ Mardy