Re: Ear and Sinus Trouble

"Jim Carr" <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:KQdmj.8493$ov5.8426@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Steve Freides wrote:

First, thanks for the detailed response.

Glad to be of some help.

Problems with steroids like prednisone don't happen for most people
unless you're taking the stuff for a while - three months is the
usually-cited cautionary time not to go beyond if at all possible.
If you're worried about possible side effects from the now-normal
tapering dose they probably prescribed you or even a more traditional
steady dose for a couple of weeks, you're probably worried over
nothing. Take the stuff. I'll spare you all my stories.

I'm doing 10 days before the taper off period. I'm not all that
worried. But as with anything that's truly effective, it can also have
unwanted effects. Show me a treatment with no side effects, and I'll
show a treatment with no primary effect.

We're on the same page here. Again, I'll spare you my stories except to
say that I've had side effects from prednisone, but what I should have
said was _lasting_ side effects. Any weirdness I've experienced has
gone away completely within a few days of being off the drug.

Ask your ENT about a series of head movements you can do that help
many people get the fluid to drain from their ears. This is standard
ENT stuff. Also, if you can, learn to do headstands. I do them
regularly, usually once every day or two, for the same basic reason.
You've got to stay up there for a little while for them to work - I
do about a minute as a minimum. I do headstands instead of the
series of head movements - I told the ENT I wanted to learn to do the
headstands, he said he wouldn't bother showing me the series.

I'll check it out, thanks.

To the best of my knowledge, your deviated septum is not related to
your fluid in the ear symptoms.

I didn't mean to imply that it was. The doc's point was that it should
be fixed at some point, the sinuses could use some treatment, and the
little tube would certainly drain my ear, so why not hit it all at
once?

Sleep apnea - are you overweight? If so, losing the poundage often
helps with this. Sleep apnea is much more prevalent in overweight
men starting in middle age. I'm thin but I have a mild case of it,
which I've managed to deal with without a cpap - mine is supposedly
related to the way my orthodontist handled my situation when I was a
kid.

When I first approached my former doc about my apnea, he said, "You
don't have apnea - that's for overweight people." I said something
smart-ass like, "Well, why do the women in my life tell me I stop
breathing while I sleep?"

He prescribed the sleep test. The lady stopped the test early and told
me, "You're already well into the severe range, so there's no sense
continuing. Let's try on the CPAP."

If I look down at even just a 45 degree angle (like looking down at
the keyboard), I cannot breathe. I have to push my lower jaw
completely forward open up the airway enough to take a breath. It's
something I find myself doing all the time like when watching TV on
the couch.

I was told that surgery has about a 60% success rate. Of course,
success means a 50% reduction in apnea events. A 50% reduction would
put me in the mild range, so I decided I'd stick with CPAP.

OK, sorry to hear that. A few more thoughts on this one, again in no
particular order:

They make a dental appliance, custom-fitted to you, that can provide
some relief. The purpose, as I understand it, is to do what you
describe, pull the lower jaw forward. That technique, BTW, is part of
what we teach in the lifeguard class to help open an airway. I know you
said you've been classified as severe and they usually don't recommend
the dental appliance in those cases, but just in case you didn't know
about it, might be worth a try.

The other part we teach is to tilt the head back when the person is
lying on their back. (It's the first choice move, but you can't do it
if you suspect a spinal injury so you go with pulling the lower jaw up
in those cases.) I got rid of a lot of my symptoms by switching to a
thinner pillow and making something of an effort to keep my head in a
good position. If your apnea is severe - mine is moderate - maybe this
doesn't do enough.

A course of treatment that's often overlooked, and I think this is a
real shame, is caffeine. They use caffeine to treat premature babies
with what is essentially sleep apnea, and I've found it can work for me,
too. My own sleep apnea management includes a sort of check of my state
of fatigue. If I'm just dog tired, I'll have a cup of coffee a couple
of hours before bedtime and actually sleep better. My wife has noticed,
time and time again, that when I'm very tired, what you might call
over-tired, my sleep apnea becomes much worse.

Another thing, sort of related to the above, is exercise. For some
people, a general improvement in physical fitness can help with those
vaguely-defined things like posture and muscle tone, but it can make a
difference for some people. For that matter, less vigorous things like
Qigong, Tai Chi, Yoga, even Pilates can help. Anything that offers
potential to realign things has at least a chance of helping. And
although I've never been to one, a chiropractor might be worth
considering.

Yet another option, again depending on exactly what causes your apnea
and what sort of things it responds to, is an Aleve or two before
bedtime. Again, just my own experience, but I experience a worsening of
apnea symptoms if I've been, e.g., out riding a bike during an allergy
season (which is most of the time, anyway, for me) for a few hours. It
causes a mild inflammation in my throat, and that can be the difference
between breathing and not - an Aleve or two makes a difference for me,
and one ENT said he'd much rather me take an Aleve every night for the
rest of my life than have surgery. I've had times, when dealing with
back pain, that I've taken Aleve for weeks on end with no side effects
that I'm aware of, either short- or long-term.

Again, best of luck with it. I confess the idea of giving up having to
do so much management of my sleep apnea and instead using a cpap
continues to tempt me.

-S-


.

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