Hi to all--

I have just ramped up my Natren (all 3 species) from 1/2 t. x 1/day, adding 1/4 t. of each a 2nd time. Also doing Wild Oregano for almost 2 weeks now at 10 drops x 3/day.

All of a sudden I've gotten a terrible sore throat, sinus congestion, etc. My guess is that this is a reaction to the additional Natren (all sorts of other good symptoms too--gas, mulitple poops, etc.)--die-off or detox. This is ok with me because I am so sure I am headed in the right direction!

HOWEVER...any suggestions on kicking the sinus infection? Sometimes when I have had these in the past (nothing to do with die-off, etc.) I have just toughed it out, but I thought if anyone has a suggestion, I would love to hear it. Also--the mold count here is sky-high right now and that could be exacerbating the whole thing.

Thanks so very much!

Help your sinuses help themselves. Get a plastic bottle called Neil-Med sinus rinse. It comes in a kit, for about $5. I used this and got rid of HORRIBLE sinus headaches. It is an 8 oz bottle you fill with distilled, room temp water and sea salt. If you're in crisis, do it twice a day. I do it every evening for maintenance and I live in a very allergy prone area...Atlanta. The action of the warm saline not only cleans out the cavity, it STIMULATES those little hairs in way back in there to vibrate and push out crud. You will experience drainage after 5 - 10 minutes; that means it's working. Go to the website.

Thanks, Karoe---I do that already! You're right, its great...I've been doing a Neti pot with either sea salt or a sea salt/baking soda combination for years. Got me off Claritin and helped allergies so much, rarely colds, etc.

I'm just going to ride this out...and have started taking Emergen-C. Jini's reference to it helped me 'guts up' and give it a shot; I was worried about the fructose content. So far, so good...so hopefully between gargling with salt water, Emergen-C, the nasal washes,etc....will be up and running again soon.

Thanks again!

Hi, Susan.

In addition, also connect with yourself regarding what you think the cause is.

As some food for thought, here's a quote from one of my favorite natural medicine resources, Rosemary Gladstar, taken from her book Rosemary Gladstar's Family Herbal. After talking about how allergies or sensitivities can affect the body, including the sinuses, she says:

"A good example of this was noted in my beautiful Bernese Mountain dog. I purchased Deva from a breeder, and she already showed symptoms of a compromised immune system and allergies by the time she landed in my welcoming lap at 12 weeks of age. Unsuspectingly, I started her on an all-natural diet, as my teacher, Juliette de Bairacli Levy, an avid dog lover and breeder of world-renowned hounds, had instructed me: organic raw meat, cottage cheese, whole grains, and vegetables. It was an awesome diet, but Deva didn't thrive on it. Though an unusually sweet puppy, she became irritable, snappy, and hyperactive. Her ears had a foul odor and were filled with excess wax, and she would often shake her head in an attempt to clear them. She also didn't hear well. Finding the allergens took time, but we were committed and eventually found that she was allergic to beef, lamb, wheat, and dairy.

"You should see this dog now. Except for her recent encounter with a porcupine, she is the picture of health and vitality. If she could have shared her experience with us verbally, telling us what she had experienced during her allergy attacks, I'm quite sure she would have complained of ringing in her ears.

"Food allergy tests can be costly and are not always accurate, but if you can afford them, they are certainly worthwhile. It is also worth your time to undertake a food elimination diet, removing from your diet one food group at a time, each for 1 to 2 weeks, and examining the results. It can be challenging, but the results are often amazing. Allergies are many and varied, but wheat, dairy, and sugar are the most common triggers. In addition to eliminating foods that may be causing allergic reactions, you can clear the sinuses by eating horseradish, ginger, and cayenne."

Now, if you think allergies or sensitivities are a contributing factor, next think about what they tell you. In my own opinion, allergies are often a sign of an immune system that isn't functioning as it should - and in many cases, neither of those are set in stone. So then the question becomes what threw the system out of balance and how can we strengthen it? This is usually going to be a multi-piece puzzle.

Once you figure out what is triggering you (if any of this resonates with you in the first place), coming as close as possible to eliminating it is going to help your body rebalance, obviously. But then, I think the immune system component needs to be addressed beyond that. Jini talks about immune system strengtheners/balancers in Chapter 2 of LTYG and they can certainly help (my own particular favorite is the maitake mushroom extract). The stress component is usually a piece of the puzzle, although the exact particulars are going to be unique to each of us. Again, speaking for myself, EFT as well as additional reading I did on my own, including the book When the Body Says No, were enlightening and helpful in addressing my own stressors.

At this point, with my immune system working well, not only do I rarely get sick with a cold or sore throat, etc. (and the few times I do, I get over it quite quickly), but I can eat lots of foods I didn't used to be able to eat without symptoms, including milk, cheese, citrus and chocolate - although I keep the chocolate to a once-in-awhile treat, just because I know it hardly qualifies as a health-promoting food!

And for additional short-term relief, something else that I found helpful was to put some hot water in a bowl, put a few drops of eucalyptus and tea tree essential oils in the water, use a large towel to make a "tent" and breathe in the steam for twenty minutes or so, morning and night. Not only do these oils (particularly the eucalyptus) help clear your sinuses temporarily, they both also have some germ-fighting capabilities.

I hope this is of some help.....

Nicole

Tea Tree and Eucalyptis oils in steam, what a great idea!! Thanks, Nicole. I am going to set that up to enjoy when I take a bath!!!

Thanks Nicole--

I appreciated your comments on allergies/immune system as well as the Gladstar excerpt (I may get her book, she's pretty neat).

I really feel this is an infection. My reactions to ingested allergens are way different from this. I truly think this was brought on by the stepped up Natren, Wild Oregano, AND the fact that I had a wet head in air conditioning for several hours the day before my symptoms set in...AND exacerbated by our high environmental mold count here right now. I am doing much better....probably the Emergen-C helped alot.

HOWEVER, I would like to tell my history as quickly as I can because my next step is to try to strengthen what I know is a compromised immune system. Have revisited that area in LTYG and am debating about where to start. I tell all this to get your thoughts on the best way to go. We are all different, but your experience is valueable (you have improved your own system alot from your reply to my question) and I would appreciate your input. (AND...if anyone reads this and sees themselves in my old habits, STOP IT; there are better ways to take care of yourself---thats the irony--I thought I was...)

I believe I tore my system down over a long period of time in these ways: birth control pill for 20plus years, narrowed my diet tremendously (faulty IBS-think), ate alot of almost to totally raw fish, primarily salmon, one of the worst offenders potentially, never ate lunch, drank wine on an empty stomach while I cooked (translate pure sugar to the body), took antibiotics just about annually for sinus infections, had a super-high stress level, excercised ALOT,...and then, perhaps the worst, went on the Fit for Life diet (again, an attempt to help my IBS...go figure) which meant, for me, eating copious amounts of fruits all morning and nothing else. I felt great, but the body was not meant to process all that fructose! Eventually, I was diagnosed with fructose intolerance (my breath test went off the charts), I lost lots of hair, I was no longer able to tolerate yogurt, totally lost tolerance for alcohol (even a sip of wine would give me a sinus headache/terrible fatigue that lasted 3-4 days), could not gain weight, muscle tone was poor, etc. Needless to say, with all that, AND lots of gut symptoms to boot, my stress level was even higher. Until getting LTYG and beginning probiotic therapy, I had been floundering for 6 years or so , trying different things, (biggest dissapointment was Pimentel's SIBO treatment) and the best I did was with the SCD diet---BUT, alot of work and very tough for travel. Eventually I stopped it, but still eat very much that way, and especially still like my almond muffins.
I have always excercised and done yoga--I added meditation into the mix about 6 months ago, and though I am pretty 'lightweigh' with it, it has helped my stress level so much!! I call it the 'relief of the quiet mind'...it truly does last throughout the day, as time goes one...strengthening a muscle, if you will. I highly recommend it to everyone.

If you have any thoughts on the selection of immune system boosters, I would love to hear. $$ is a big issue right now and am spending alot as I ramp up the Natren (Wild Oregano is costly too, and I am going through a bottle a week), but that is not the bottom line. Effectiveness is...and gentle on the gut; I am going through so many changes with the probiotics and Oregano, need a little calmness. I am very excited about this...almost like reaching a baseline of feeling better gut-wise, enough to say...NOW, lets deal with some of the root issues!

Thanks so much!!!

Hi, Susan.

Yes, it sounds like you have a good handle on the combination of circumstances that led up to the current infection......

I enjoyed reading your history and insights. Your take on the SCD is quite similar to mine. I have most of the SCD cookbooks and still enjoy making a lot of the meals (I really like the Sweet & Spicy Squash Soup in Grain-Free Gourmet), but I've found that sticking to it religiously simply isn't necessary for me.

Now, as far as the immune system, I've taken threads from a lot of different things I've read and put them together into something that works for me. I haven't stuck to every bit of any of these "programs" completely - although I've come closest to that with Jini's protocols - I've taken a bit from here, a bit from there - whatever "grabbed" me or maybe a better way to put it would be whatever felt profoundly true to me - and kept adding to what I was already doing as it felt right.

From Jini, I learned about maitake mushroom extract, which I already mentioned. Knowing it shouldn't be taken continually, I pretty much took it "by feel," just when I intuitively felt it would benefit me. I haven't taken it in awhile, but I keep some on hand. I felt that it did a wonderful job complementing Jini's Wild Oregano Protocol for my body.

And also from Jini, I learned about the Healing Diets - particularly which foods would be likely aggravators of particular symptoms. That was helpful, as well. At long last, I'm successfully on the Maintenance Diet - for awhile, I thought I'd never get beyond the Reduce Gas & Bloating Diet.

From Dr. Mercola, I learned about the "Insight" CDs, which stimulate Alpha brainwaves - the same brainwave pattern you have during meditation. (They're available at his website, www.mercola.com, for anyone who's interested.) I don't listen to them with any particular regularity, but find them deeply relaxing when I do use them.

I learned a lot about stress - including what it is and isn't - how it affects the various systems in the body, including the endocrine and immune systems - and just how these systems intertwine, so that stress produces a cascade of effects in the body in Dr. Gabor Mate's book, When the Body Says No. That gave me a new appreciation for some of the nuts and bolts of how EFT has helped me.

One major benefit of EFT for me has been that I've learned what stress feels like in my own body and as soon as I feel that, I've learned to take the reins. For me, a big stressor is feeling overwhelmed - too much to do in too little time - and I've learned that when I least feel I can take the time to connect with myself is the time when I most need to and will derive the greatest benefits.

From there, I started getting interested in the Law of Attraction and read two books on the subject, Attracting Abundance with EFT by Dr. Carol Look and Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting by Lynn Grabhorn. Basically, I started really thinking about what I wanted my life to be - as opposed to what I didn't want it to be - and thinking about how I could create that. Maximum Achievement by Brian Tracy also had some quite insightful information about the Law of Attraction - I really enjoyed his book very much.

And recently, I've started reading Take Time for Your Life by Cheryl Richardson. That's required reading for a class I'm taking and I haven't finished it, yet, but so far, it looks promising.

The biggest thing I've learned is that for long-term success, change has to start on the inside. The outside will take care of manifesting itself, quite automatically, as a reflection of the changes from within. That's one of those things I really want to make sure my kids understand, really understand - because sure I wish I had, earlier.

What do I think all this had to do with my immune system? Well, it's proven - I don't think you'll find even the most traditional of traditional medical doctors disputing this - that stress has a MAJOR impact on the immune system. Similar to the way you say that "there are better ways to take care of yourself---thats the irony--I thought I was...," it's only in retrospect that I realize how much stress I was really under earlier in my life.

We can think or be a certain way for so long or maybe from such an early time in our lives that we don't realize that that way is not truth in any absolute sense - it simply feels like a part of us because it's been there for as long as we can remember. If we can identify and reframe those things, all of a sudden possibilities become evident that were there in front of us all the time but that we didn't even see - or at least didn't see as possible for us.

Bottom line for me: My immune system couldn't be balanced when my life wasn't balanced. And when I say balanced, I don't mean in any kind of static way - as if once you achieve a particular state, you're there for good. To use a physical metaphor, just try to stand absolutely, perfectly still. You can't do it! Your body is constantly making little adjustments that keep you centered and upright - that's balance. The smaller the adjustments necessary, the better the balance - but it's still dynamic and not static.

Remembering that whether a person comes down with cancer (in this example, but it's true for any disease) or heals from it is intimately tied in with the immune system, the following resonated deeply with me when I read it. It comes from When the Body Says No:

Smoking no more causes cancer of the lung than being thrown into deep water causes drowning. Fatal as immersion in deep water can be to the unprotected non-swimmer, for someone who swims well or is equipped with a life jacket, it poses little risk. A combination of factors is necessary to cause drowning. It is the same with lung cancer.

Smoking vastly increases the risk of cancer, not only of the lung but also of the bladder, the throat and other organs. But logic alone tells us that it cannot, by itself, cause any of these malignancies. If A causes B, then every time A is present, B should follow. If B does not follow A consistently, then A cannot, by itself, be the cause of B - even if, in most cases, it might be a major and perhaps necessary contributing factor. If smoking caused lung cancer, every smoker would develop the disease.

Several decades ago, David Kissen, a British chest surgeon, reported that patients with lung cancer were frequently characterized by a tendency to "bottle up" emotions. In a number of studies, Kissen supported his clinical impressions that people with lung cancer "have poor and restricted outlets for the expression of emotion, as compared with non-malignancy lung patients and normal controls." The risk of lung cancer, Kissen found, was five times higher in men who lacked the ability to express emotion effectively. Especially intriguing was that those lung cancer patients who smoked but did not inhale exhibited even greater repression of emotion than those who did. Kissen's observations implied that emotional repression works synergistically with smoking in the causation of lung cancer. The more severe the repression, the less the smoke damage required to result in cancer.

These findings do not absolve tobacco products or cigarette manufacturers of responsibility in the prevalence of lung cancer - on the contrary. All the thirty-eight people in the Cvrenka study who died of lung cancer had been smokers. The results indicated that for lung cancer to occur, tobacco alone is not enough: emotional repression must somehow potentiate the effects of smoke damage on the body. But how?

Psychological influences make a decisive biological contribution to the onset of malignant disease through the interconnections linking the components of the body's stress apparatus: the nerves, the hormonal glands, the immune system and the brain centres where emotions are perceived and processed.

So absolutely, use tools to address the physical - be it maitake or Emergen-C or other supplements. Just remember to keep looking to your inside, too. My own experience leads me to suggest that just as emotional repression can potentiate the damage from a known carcinogen, the opposite is also true - supplements work best when our emotional health supplies an environment conducive to healing. Or to borrow from King Solomon: "A heart that is joyful does good as a curer."

Smiles (I love talking with you),

Nicole

Hi, karoe.

You're welcome! Although I have to give credit where it's due - to my Oma (grandmother) Hildegarde. She knew all kinds of stuff like that.

Hope it helps you!

Nicole

WOW Nicole--

Thanks a zillion---I will elaborate a a little in a later post, but have just skimmed what you wrote and cannot thank you enough. This little (not small in size or scope, I appreciate your length and thoroughness so much) exchange gives me a tremendous boost and confirmation in some work I am doing with myself right now. Every fiber in me knows how true your main message is. AND...how much it applies to anyone, gut problems or not.

Just wanted to quickly say thanks again, and have a terrific weekend!

I never ever got sinus infections, then a year or two started getting them, awful, feels like your head is going to explode. I had some colloidal silver sitting around, basically it never worked on anything I tried it for, but it had a sprayer on it and decided what the heck I'll spray it in my nose and inhale, snorting it. Two days later my infection was gone. It really works, try it.

What I did was snort the stuff maybe 4 times a day, keep it up til it goes away which it will quickly.....

Thanks for sharing, possum.