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Comment by hattar

13 hours ago

I spent my whole life only breathing through half a nostril on a good day. About 10 years ago I got surgery and Sublingual Immunotherapy drops, and the results have been life changing.

I sleep better, my mind is clearer, I feel like an entirely new person. I am not exaggerating when I say that I still occasionally think about how nice it is to be able to breathe clearly.

15 comments

hattar

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darkwater  9 hours ago

I was recently on cortisone for 3 months due to another condition and whoa I didn't remember how cool life was without a perpetual running nose.

greggsy  10 hours ago

Flonase (fluticasone) has been a life changer. I have taken for granted how valuable breathing is in terms of speech, let alone sleep and general fatigue.

  • mattgreenrocks  2 hours ago

    I have had bad allergies for a lot of my life. I probably have some sort of histamine intolerance behind it all.

    Recently my allergist gave me a tip with regard to nasal congestion. First, you can use Flonase and Astepro together, apparently they work better when used together. Astepro has an antihistamine in it that can help. Second, moisturize the interior of your nasal passages with a drop of muciprocin in each nostril applied inside your nose at the tip of it, then squeeze your nose gently to distribute. This lets you use get the benefits of Flonase without drying out your nose (which can trigger congestion).

  • appleorchard46  2 hours ago

    Moving to the coast made me feel like I finally woke up, after growing up perpetually stuffy and sniffly. Turns out I'm not a mouth breather after all!

  • dl9999  6 hours ago

    Same for me. I spent the first 45 years of my life breathing almost entirely though my mouth. Then I tried some nasal spray that was great, but made the situation worse when I inevitably overused it, so I went to a doctor. I had been told when I was a kid that I had polyps, so I went to see about getting them removed. She put me on Flonase, which at the time was prescription, and since then I've been able to breathe through my nose unless I'm sick. It has been a significant quality of life improvement for me.

  • wintermutestwin  3 hours ago

    I’ve taken it for over 30 years now. It has indeed been a lifesaver and so much better than all the pills. One side effect is blurred vision and I have definitely noticed a slight blurring in the last couple of years. I gladly accept it as a small price to pay for decades of relief.

    • saalweachter  2 hours ago

      I feel like this is a trade-off not always understood and accepted in modern times; we expect our medicines to be perfect and our bodies to be restored to new condition, and when this isn't the case we feel betrayed.

coenhyde  12 hours ago

Oxygen is a hell of a drug.

I use nose strips, and I'm addicted now too.

  • thanatos519  11 hours ago

    I tried nose strips but I don't like disposables. I now use silicone nostril openers - two little tubes attached at the base that you stick up your nose. It came as a set of 4 sizes so a bit of waste there, but one size fit me and one size fit my wife.

    • N2yhWNXQN3k9  9 hours ago

      These work well, but I wonder about hygiene. I keep mine in a glass dish on my desktop and attempt to cleanse them in hydrogen peroxide on occasion.

      Ultimately, surgery is the best option in my experienced opinion, but it also has diminishing returns over time (~20 years in my case). This occurred recently for me, and I am looking to consult with an ENT again, when I feel like taking the recovery leap. With that said, I am still functioning extremely better than I ever did when I couldn't breathe 20 years ago.

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