Rhinitis running to drive me crazy!
“vasomotor rhinitis seems to be an exaggeration of the normal nasal response to irritation, occurring at levels of exposure, which doesn’t bother most people.”
Vasomotor Rhinitis, Asthma + Respiratory Foundation New Zealand
Way, way back my GP told me my non-stop congested nose was traumatic rhinitis. The trauma of my brain injury, the stress and fatigue, were causing symptoms of having a nasty, permanent cold.
Ever since, I’ve known that my nose stuffing up is a sign I’m doing too much and need to rest. So it was a couple weeks ago. Frustrating. But I’ve become a little more “go with the flow” of it. I had, after all, just completed a writing sprint week. Normal to be heavily fatigued.
I rested.
I woke up after days of rest and felt good. I did my usual morning audiovisual entrainment SMR/Beta session with red lights. Suddenly, my nose screamed, “Irritant! Sneeze! Sneeze now! Sneeze harder!” WTF‽
Whole damn day, my nose yelled “irritant! irritant!,” like a fire alarm, and it ran like a faucet on full bore. Allergies. Must be. Then I learnt a new word from one of my physicians:
Vasomotor rhinitis.
In this case, he was referring to my nose reacting to a change in temperature. Too early for allergies, he noted, and Toronto had just experienced one of its famous huge temp changes. The indoors isn’t completely isolated from the outdoors, so it still affected me. Wonderful. My nose has another excuse to drive me crazy!
“The main trigger for [vasomotor rhinitis] VMR is changes in the weather, and changes in the barometric pressure. You may notice that you get significant nasal congestion or stuff nose when there is a front moving in, with a rain storm or on days with changes in the humidity. This is essentially due to sensitive nerve endings in the nasal passages leading to over reaction that results in swelling of blood vessels. This leads to the congestion, runny nose, and post nasal drip found in VMR.”
Allergy and Asthma Associates of Southern California
I’m better but taking it hour by hour and using Hydrasense nasal spray when the faucet turns back on. (I’ve gone the gamut of things to help my traumatic rhinitis. This one still works. I also use oil of oregano, ginger tea, lozenges, and chew slowly strong crystallized ginger.) I’m focusing on my reading and restricting how much writing/computer work I do. I’ve also halved my walking because physical and cognitive work both consume brain energy, this rhinitis drained me (pun time!), and I don’t have resources to do both as I’ve been able to for awhile within reason and very very gradually increasing. That’s brain injury for you. Fatigue will always bite you in the…nose.
Update 26 Feb 2022: I forgot to mention I used SMR/gamma audiovisual entrainment session a couple of extra times plus I turned on the CES and used the 100Hz setting. I haven’t used my DAVID Delight Pro’s CES in the past because the strength of its current is more than I’m used to from my old standalone CES device. But funnily enough, with keeping the ear clips dry, I was fine. I turned CES on because I’ve discovered from using my old device as part of my hypothalamus fix that it diminishes rhinitis symptoms. I guess its current loosens things up in there?? Anyway, it helped, too.
