Sinusitis is a common complaint people have these days. Be it due to pollution or an allergy, sinusitis can be quite annoying and painful. But instead of using medication to temporarily rid yourself of the discomfort, here is an understanding as to why you suffer from the problem in the first place. In this article Anu Mehta, META-Health master tells you about the why and how of sinusitis.
Why do people suffer from sinusitis?
To understand why people suffer from sinusitis, we need to understand the term sinuses. Sinuses are hollow cavities within the bones of the face or skull connecting with the nasal cavities. The word ‘sinus’ originates from the Latin word, which means a recess, bend or bay. Recess has various meanings like a hollow space inside something and remote/secluded/secret place. It also means to withdraw or recede back.
The biological role of the sinuses is debated, but a number of possible functions have been proposed, they are:
- Decreasing the relative weight of the front of the skull, and especially the bones of the face.
- Increasing resonance of the voice.
- Providing a buffer against blows to the face.
- Insulating sensitive structures like dental roots and eyes from rapid temperature fluctuations in the nasal cavity.
- Humidifying and heating of inhaled air because of slow air turnover in this region.
- Regulation of intranasal and serum gas pressures
- Immunological defense
According to META-Health a disease is preceded by a biological shock and an emotional conflict which is unexpected and makes the person feel that he is going through a dramatic situation. Often people feel that they cannot share what is bothering them and hence leaves them feeling isolated. When it comes to sinusitis, the biological conflict in case of sinusitis is connected with smelling danger and hence it is called ‘stink conflict’. This implies that the person has not been able to ‘sniff out danger’.
It is believed that a person usually suffers from sinusitis, when they feel guilty of not having prevented some harm, they thought they could have prevented. Thoughts like, ‘I have not been able to resolve this is a very deep-seated feeling’, ‘I have done something wrong.’ ‘I will have to deal with this issue by taking action and this action will create a change.’
Unfortunately when a person feels like this, he/she tends to consume all their energy by trying to withhold the changes and hence becomes like a pond full of water, which is stagnant and has algae growing on it. Incidentally, this is how an infected sinus looks.
According to Meta-health when the person faces the ‘stink conflict’, i.e. when he sniffs danger, the nasal membrane and the mucosal lining of the sinus ulcerates, causing tissue loss which in turn widens the nasal passage so that the danger can be identified. When the person resolves the conflict the nasal passage and sinus will get stuffed up. Pain will be experienced with stuffiness. When the conflict occurs, a person may use all/some/one of his five senses, for example what he saw, heard, felt, smelt or tasted and what were his thoughts that made him feel danger. All these are called triggers, which get captured in the cortex, nasal membrane and sinuses as if they were 30 second movies and could be replayed again and again.
What does sinusitis mean?
The four sinuses in the human skull are and an infection of each sinus correlates to a particular kind of feeling. The location and conflict of each differs and hence the area which is best suited for the conflict is affected.
Frontal sinusitis: When a person sniffs danger of being attacked directly from the front, which may be a figurative attack like sudden bombardment with emotional stress, a strong verbal attack, a raid, physical attack, rape which causesphysical harm to a person. Whatever may be the reason, any such ‘attack’ will cause the frontal sinusitis.
Sphenoidal Sinusitis: The word sphenoidal originated from Latin word sphenoides which meant ‘wedge’. From a META-Health point of view this kind of infection directly relates to separation because of disagreement or hostility between two or more people.
Ethmoidal Sinusitis: The reason for an infection in the ethmoidal sinus is usually caused when a person feels he/she has been accused of something that he/she knows he/she is guilty of.
Maxillary Sinusitis: This kind of sinus infection suggests that a person feels he/she is in danger of dying or suffering a defeat.
How can META-Health help resolve the issue?
To resolve an issue it is important to resolve the triggers. The biological significance of triggers is to serve as a warning signal, as if saying ‘Watch out! Thus, whenever the brain registers the person or thing that means means ‘danger’ to you, the part of your brain that registers danger is quickly re-activated causing sinusitis.
For example a young boy of 18years developed sinusitis; on detailed probing it was found that his father had argued with his mother and the boy had witnessed this for the first time in his life and was taken aback by shock. It happened so that his mother was cooking in the kitchen, her friend came to the kitchen and hugged her, which was very customary gesture of affection expressed by the friend. His father saw this and responded with verbal abuse.
This, to the young boy felt like a ‘danger of attack’ on his mother, but could not take appropriate action by stopping his father from verbally abusing his mother. This led to anger against himself and his father. To add to this his brain also registered the smell of a particular dish being cooked in the kitchen.
When the issue was resolved between his parents the boy developed sinusitis. But whenever the father would scold his mother or his mother would cook that particular dish he would again go through the same trauma, in turn causing sinusitis which would quickly become aggravated.
His mind had formed an association of the smell of that particular dish, loud sounds and father’s expression as danger, which triggered his sinusitis. This later developed into chronic sinusitis which he could not recover from. The triggers were identified, and this helped him recover from the disease.
Photo source: Getty images
