Articles | The New York Sinus Center

New Year’s Eve is probably the biggest drinking night of the year. Even if you do not typically drink alcohol during the year, you will probably find yourself indulging on this particular holiday – which can be bad news for reflux sufferers. In fact, 94 percent of people say they would have more fun on New Years Eve if they did not have to worry about heartburn.

Some of the adverse affects alcohol creates for heartburn sufferers

• Alcohol increases the production of stomach acid.
• Alcohol relaxes the lower esophageal sphincter (LES), allowing stomach contents to reflux back up into the esophagus.
• When the LES relaxes, it causes the contractions that occur with swallowing to become erratic.
• Alcohol makes the esophagus more sensitive to stomach acid.

What can you do to avoid heartburn on New Year’s Eve while still popping bottles with the best of them?

• Dilute alcoholic beverages with water or club soda.
• Don’t overdo it. The suggested amounts of alcohol for reflux sufferers are 1-2 mixed drinks, 12-16 ounces of wine or champagne or 2-3 beers.
• When having wine, choose white wine instead of red.
• Plan ahead for relief of heartburn with the over-the-counter medication of your choice.
• When you go to sleep keep your head elevated by placing books under the head of your mattress or several pillows under your head.
• Don’t drink it… shake, pop and spray it.

Champagne Showers

“ Walk in the club with a bottle or two

Shake it, spray it on a body or two

And walk our the party with a hottie or two”

- LMFAO

If you’re plagued with sinusitis, then making time for a bit of exercise might be the last thing on your mind. Sinus trouble, after all, can bring along fatigue, troublesome coughing and lingering headaches. Still, there’s a natural remedy for those symptoms that can also help you de-stress: yoga.

Acute sinusitis should be treated with an antibiotic or another remedy recommended by your doctor (call us if you need help), but a regular yoga routine can help keep symptoms at bay. Yoga provides instant relief for some health conditions and offers cumulative benefits for others, as long as you keep up a consistent practice. And since stress can worsen many healthy problems – including sinusitis – the relaxing benefits of yoga can be significant.

What poses and stretches put up the best fight against sinus symptoms? Start with these:

• Shoulder Stand (Sarvangasana): Use a few mats from your shoulders to your elbows for support. As you hold the pose and relax, you might just find that your sinus trouble eases.
• Supported Half Plow Pose (Ardha Halasana): You can use a chair to support your feet during this exercise, which extends your upper-back and neck muscles.
• Plow Pose (Halasana): Holding this inverted position can increase circulation, boost breathing and drain the nose to offer relief.
• Lion Pose (Simhasana): This pose helps exercise the face and neck, and it can alleviate sore-throat symptoms at the same time.

As always, check with your physician before starting a new fitness routine. And it’s best to consult with a yoga instructor to make sure you’re practicing each pose correctly, to avoid damage to joints, muscles and other tissue. With that in mind, we’ll be happy to help you find a natural way to alleviate your sinus symptoms. Just get in touch if you’d like more guidance suited for your lifestyle.

Now that winter is creeping closer, so are seasonal sinus issues. If you find yourself suffering from sinus congestion (the inflammation and swelling of the nasal lining), then you might be underwhelmed about holiday parties and New Year’s Eve. Congestion can stem from a sinus infection, cold, allergies or the flu, and excess mucus can make symptoms all the worse. Fortunately, herbal teas can be a soothing, natural remedy for cold-weather health blues.

How do herbal teas help? First, the steam from boiling water can reduce congestion. Inhaling additional vapors as you sip also can alleviate nasal inflammation, and drinking the hot beverage itself can speed nasal drainage by moisturizing the mucus membranes.

Several types of herbal tea are especially beneficial for relieving congestion:

• Peppermint
• Chamomile
• Eucalyptus
• Wild thyme
• Blackberry

Adding lemon juice or a slice of lemon to your tea can also thin mucus, thanks to the acidic properties of the fruit.

While dealing with sinus congestion in the winter months and all year long, consult with a doctor to see what treatment is right for you and whether herbal remedies should be part of your care. We’re always here when you need to talk.

Are your sleep sessions less satisfying than you’d like? If you snore loudly, become excessively tired during daytime hours, awake with a dry mouth, or wake up suddenly and feel short of breath, you might have sleep apnea. The condition is common in the U.S., now that 1 in 5 Americans suffer from a mild form of the ailment, and 1 in 15 have moderate to severe sleep apnea. But those figures are expected to jump, as one condition associated with sleep apnea – obesity – rises across the country.

By 2030, it’s expected that about 164 million Americans will be obese, according to a new study. Obesity has a strong association with the more common type of sleep apnea, obstructive sleep apnea, because fat deposits in the upper airway can cause breathing trouble. It should be noted that thin individuals also get the condition, but for those who are obese, healthy weight loss has been shown to reduce episodes of the disorder.

Here’s a major problem to consider: it’s estimated that 80 to 90 percent of people with sleep apnea don’t even know they have it. Because sleep apnea is linked to a number of serious health concerns, it’s important to visit a doctor to examine and manage symptoms. Hypertension, erectile dysfunction, diabetes, stroke and heart failure are just a few of the health issues that have been associated with the sleep disorder.

It’s important to manage a healthy weight, but it’s also critical to check with a doctor if you have any reason to suspect you might suffer from sleep apnea. Proper testing can bring peace of mind and, with the right care, lead to better nights of rest.

“Marijuana is taken by … musicians. And I’m not speaking about good musicians, but the jazz type…”
Harry J. Anslinger (Commissioner of the US Bureau of Narcotics, 1930-1962)

Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in the United States. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 95 million Americans age 12 and older have tried marijuana at least once. Not surprisingly, experimental science involving cannabis has been largely restricted due to its illegality. Thus, while some health consequences of cannabis are known, the long term health effects of cannabis smoking remain unclear.

So… What are the FACTS?

1. Marijuana smoke contains a 50-70 percent higher concentration of carcinogens than tobacco smoke contains (carcinogens are substances that cause cancer).
2. Marijuana smokers inhale deeper and hold their breath longer than tobacco smokers do.  This further increases the lungs’ exposure to carcinogenic smoke
3. Regular marijuana smokers show deregulated growth of epithelial cells in their lung tissue- such pathological changes precede the development of lung cancer in tobacco smokers.
4. Regular cannabis smokers have a higher prevalence of chronic bronchitis symptoms (wheezing, sputum production, chronic cough) and a higher incidence of acute bronchitis than non-smokers.
5. Regular cannabis consumption is associated with airway injury, lung inflammation and impaired pulmonary defense against infection.

Despite these facts, epidemiological studies have been repeatedly and perhaps unexpectedly unsuccessful in linking marijuana use to respiratory cancers.
In 2006, the largest case-control study of its kind, funded by the National Institute of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse at UCLA, found no association between marijuana smoking and cancer.  Researcher Donald Tashkin, MD, of the study explained “We know that there are as many or more carcinogens and co-carcinogens in marijuana smoke as in cigarettes, but we did not find any evidence for an increase in cancer risk for even heavy marijuana smoking.”  While two-pack-a-day or more cigarette smokers were found to have a 20-fold increase in lung cancer, no elevation in risk was seen for even the heaviest marijuana smokers (the heaviest marijuana users in the study had smoked more than 22,0000 joints).

So… Why doesn’t smoking marijuana cause cancer if smoking cigarettes does?
The answer is not clear, but Dr. Tashkin and his team of researchers say it might have something to do with tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which is a chemical found in marijuana smoke. Cellular studies and even some studies in animal models suggest that THC has antitumor properties, either by encouraging the death of genetically damaged cells that can become cancerous or by restricting the development of the blood supply that feeds tumors.  While the nicotine in tobacco has been show to inhibit the destruction of cancer-causing cells, THC appears to do the opposite seemingly lessening the tumor-promoting properties of marijuana smoke.

Marijuana is Not a Demon Weed or a Benign Substance…
In other words, just because cannabis has not been confirmed as a cause of respiratory cancers this does not make it healthy.  While not cancer-causing, prolonged exposure to marijuana smoke will leave your lungs open to injury and infection.  Recently, studies have shown that vaporizing cannabis exposes the user to lower levels of harmful substances than smoking cannabis.  Vaporizers are a safer cannabinoid delivery system; however, they still do not eliminate respiratory irritation completely.

If you suffer from allergies, you have probably taken an anti-histamine drug at some point during your life. By the time the drug entered your blood stream, you were probably too exhausted to wonder what histamine is, but it turns out that it is actually an extremely important chemical that causes a chain of physiological reactions.

How does histamine work?
Basically, histamine is responsible for triggering your allergic response. It is always in your body, but the introduction of an allergen can cause a sudden spike of histamine that is either localized to the area (for instance, the itchy red bump caused by a mosquito bite), or system-wide. Indeed, with a severe allergic reaction, the histamine response is so strong that it can lead to organ failure due to anaphylactic shock.

While antihistamines can block histamine receptors in your body, they don’t actually reduce the amount of histamine in your system—the only way for your body to actually reduce histamine is by releasing adrenaline. If you have a chronic allergic reaction, your body is constantly releasing too much adrenaline to combat the excess of histamine, which ultimately depletes the adrenaline available for you to do other things. This is likely to leave you feeling fatigued and unhappy. It might also cause you to experience panic-like symptoms, as sudden spurts of adrenaline are released into your system.

If you have allergies, then, it’s not just your sinuses that are suffering—it’s your whole system. We think it’s important to find the root cause of your allergic reactions, instead of simply prescribing medication to control your symptoms. If you want relief from you allergies, contact us today. We can help you get healthy and stay healthy.

For thousands of years, people have used scent to help them make decisions. Cleopatra filled her boat with roses and jasmine when she went to meet Mark Anthony. On the other hand, the stink of a skunk gives a clear warning. And a house seems much more welcoming when it emanates the cinnamon-scent of apple pie.

But smell doesn’t just tell a story, or send a message. It can also improve your health—at least according to practitioners of aromatherapy. Aromatherapy is a traditional healing modality in which the practitioner uses the distilled oils of plant, known as essential oils, to promote physical and psychological well-being. Plants, of course, are the oldest medicines: aspirin is derived from willow bark, codeine from poppies.

But how can aromatherapy help treat, or even prevent, sinusitis? After all, it’s not like you can smell anything when you have a stuffy nose…it’s stuffed up, that’s the problem.

Well, as you know, steaming your sinuses helps thin the mucus, relieving the pressure in your sinuses. Adding some essential oil to the hot water can help clear your sinuses and keep them healthy—and may help you avoid sinusitis.

These essential oils are considered especially beneficial for preventing and treating sinusitis:

• Eucalyptus
• Peppermint
• Rosemary
• Tea Tree

Just add a few drops of any of those oils to hot water. Then kick back and enjoy the steam. If you find that your sinuses don’t clear up, or that they keep getting stopped up, give a call to an NY sinus doctor here at our offices.

If you snore, chances are someone in your life has complained about it. Frequently. Rest assured, however—you’re in good company. Approximately half of adult Americans snore occasionally, and about a quarter snore regularly. The problem tends to be worse in males, and in overweight individuals. There’s more bad news: while you may hope your spouse will outgrow a snoring problem, it actually tends to get worse with age. Sometimes substantially worse.

When we breathe, the air flow is typically smooth. However, obstructions in the airway can cause turbulence, and the turbulence can cause vibrations in the structure of the upper airway. These structures, including the sinuses, are essentially resonance chambers—so the vibrations can result in anything from the occasional snerk to full-on, earthquake-level snoring.

Silly as snoring can seem, it can also be indicative of some fairly serious problems. If you snore, you should probably be assessed for:

• Sinusitis
• Nasal polyps
• Enlarged adenoids
• Deviated septum

It is important to assess these conditions if only to rule them out—snoring is also associated with a serious medical condition known as Obstructive Sleep Apnea. People who snore may also be at higher risk for hypertension, heart attack, and stroke.

So, as your spouse may already be telling you, snoring is no joke. If you snore, give an NYC sinus doctor at the NYC Sinus Center a call. We can help.