Must I use antibiotics? Can I wash it, more or less, out with buffered saline?

DS2 will have to work with second and third generation rather harsh abx, if I go that route. OTOH, he seems to get persistent ENT infections. It's messed up his speech, for instance.

I had one that took six months of abx to clear up, too. So I know I can't really neglect this.

What do you do?

Ari

I would love to know the answer to this as well. Right now I have a horrible sinus infection. It is the third one in the last 4 months and they last nearly 3 weeks.

I am so desperate and miserable I am thinking about going to the doc tomorrow for an antibiotic.

I will be watching this thread to see if you get any answers.

Thanks for posting. I hope your ds gets better soon.

IMO once you have a nasty infection you really might need to use conventional abx.

But here is what we have done to prevent recurrent sinus infections. Besides all the allergy-reducing things you can do -- biggest one for us was pulling up our carpeting -- you can use xylitol in a nasal wash. It is *really* effective. Go to www.xlear.com. You can buy the nasal spray pre-made. But if you are adventurous, you can buy the bulk xylitol that they use in the Xlear spray. It is called Xylisweet and it is on that website, unless they have changed it. It's a sweet-tasting white powder. You mix a little of it into saline and put it in a neti pot and follow the instructions. Or you buy a saline nasal spray and add a bit of the xylitol to it, then wash (sterilize) the bottle when it's empty and refill with homemade saline/xylitol.

You can also ask for a prescription for a Rhinoflow. http://www.sinus-allergies.com/reno_flow.html They actually have some other different types of irrigators on that website. The Breathease XL solution that they recommend, if I recall correctly, has xylitol in it. Here's the link for that, it is basically what I am telling you to do but in a kit: http://www.sinus-allergies.com/breath_easy.html

Also to test the salinity of it you can taste the solution you made (just keep it clean, LOL) and it should taste like tears if it's the salinity of your body.

Xylitol makes your mucus membranes "slippery" so that bacteria can't stick to them. And even though it is a sugar, it is a 6-ring sugar that yeast and bacteria can't feed on.

Gotta run...LMK if you have any more questions, I'd be happy to answer. I have more ideas but this has been the most effective!

I had a really serious sinus infection late last year and did manage to clear it up without antibiotics. The reason why is because I believe I had the infection because I believe infection/inflamation is he body's way of detoxing. If you take antibiotics all you are doing is killing the fireman who have come to put out the fire, why would you want to do that? All it will do is force the toxicity to go deeper into the body only to surface somewhere is in another form.

With that in mind, I was in tremendous pain, and went to a naturopath who uses several different modalities. He knew just how difficult this was going to be without antibiotics. He put me on a very high dosage of garlic combined with a high dosage of enzymes. I also took collodial silver and he used some sort of hand held lazer, he lent me one to use at home. These lazers are evidently only available in Germany. To support this I eat only raw foods, mostly raw eggs. It wasn't a quick cure, I guess it took about two weeks, but I can truly say the infection was completely removed and I doubt very much it will ever come up. I have had sinus issues since I was a child, and I think this episode allowed me to clear it up completely.

The cure was so successful that he wrote up the protocol and is using it in his teaching.

So it can be done!

Ooh, Deborah, wow...very cool!

I forgot about colloidal silver. You can take it internally and also wash out your nose with it. You can also wash out nose/sinuses with a solution made with grapefruit seed extract.

Here is some great info on Colloidal Silver.

http://pinelife.com/subs/colloidalsilver_2.html

It is as effective if not more effective than an antibiotic.

I went to the doc today out of desperation and he told me to use a basic saline spray, That's it. He said it would clear it up faster than anything.

I had a nasty sinus and double ear infection. Man I was in pain!!! I cleared both without the use of abx. I later came down with just a sinus infection and used the same protocal... this is what I did...
I used Dr. Christopher's Menthol Rub and diluted it slightly by rubbing some olive oil on my sinuses and then massaged it into my sinuses to get them draining. Warning, it will sting a bit and will make your face red where you put it. I also rubbed it down my eustachian tubes. This is IMPORTANT. If you don't, your sinuses could back up your eustachian tubes and then you get even more pain. I put warm garlic/mullein oil in my ears 3-4 times a day along with some warm xceptic tincture (another Dr. Christopher's formula). When I wasn't using the menthold rub, I rubbed xceptic down my sinues and eustachian tubes. I also took Dr. Christopher's Sinus Plus formula- it has goldenseal in it to help with the sinus infection. I avoided mucus forming foods like dairy and sugar and processed junk.

You can irrigate the nose with goldenseal water or even just powdered goldenseal too...