Every morning, I wake up with one nostril almost completely congested, and the other free. Is this normal?
My septum is not deviated, and a CT scan showed that my sinuses are in great shape. I don’t have any classic allergy symptoms like sneezing, rashes, teary eyes etc.
I went to 4 doctors about the nasal congestion, and only one of them (quite famous - he’s allegedly the best sinus surgeon on NorCal) told me, after performing two surgeries cutting away from the lining of my nostrils, that it’s actually normal to wake up like that and that 90% of people have this symptom.
Of course, this is highly dubious - why wasn’t I told that BEFORE the surgeries? Why has no other doctor told me about it?
Anyway, I would like to ask for help from my fellow quantified selfers:
When you wake up, is one of your nostril stuffed more than 75%, so that if you exhale naturally, air comes out only through the other nostril? 100% congestion means that if you cover the free nostril and exhale, almost no air will come out.
Do you suffer from any allergies that have been confirmed to cause nasal congestion?
If i have a cold, this will occasionally happen. I always sleep on either my right or left side, so whatever side I wake up on, the nostril closer to the bed will be congested. But when I do not have a cold, this doesn’t happen.
I have had problems for years with sinus blockage. Every morning I wake up with both passages blocked. I don’t have allergies. I was diagnosed with apnea and have started using a sleep mask from ResMed. It makes a huge difference. You have the option of using a moisture tank with it and that helps even more.
Another less costly product is to use a Neti pot before going to bed and then again in the morning. It basically washes your sinuses with a saline solution.
Not any more. I used to suffer from near-chronic sinusitis, which ended up being caused by non-acute food allergies. This may not apply to you at all, but a lot of unrelated allergies disappeared when I cut out some things I was eating that were causing a low level reaction.
My suggestion would be cutting out wheat, dairy, sugar for a week or two each, then have a large amount one evening. If any of them is the cause, then it should be really obvious when you are congested the next morning. Additionally, check your hydration. That’ll lead to congestion as well.
Just my 2 cents. I went from 10ish sinus infections a year with constant allergy meds + neti pot to no congestion, no meds, no neti just by removing dairy and cutting back on wheat.
Thanks everyone for their replies, and looking forward for more. It seems like I have a rare-ish condition.
In my case, if having a cold were the cause, then it means I have a cold year-round… without any other symptoms. matttrent, thanks for the food elimination idea. I’ll have to quantify how that works. I’ve been almost completely off carbs for the past week already and no improvement yet, but there have been some carbs. And cheese.
Here’s something odd about my congestion: using a Net pot (or NeilMed Sinus Rinse, much more convenient) doesn’t help. It only reduces congestion from 90% to 80%. But if I do light cardio (jog in place) for 90 seconds, both nostrils free up. They congest back within a minute, but if I do more cardio, they free up again, and remain mostly free during the day, even if I stop doing cardio (I work at the computer for the rest of the day, but the nostrils stay acceptably free for 10+ hours).
Might the congestion of the nostrils be caused by blood in their lining, which accumulates there for some reason?
No, but I do have a consistent issue with waking up and needing to cough up phlegm. Never figured out the cause. I’ve had a few dr’s tell me it’s due to allergies, but I can’t figure out what I might be allergic to.
Yes! (80-100% congestion in one nostril, the one closest to the bed like someone else said. Some congestion in the other nostril as well, but not enough to make breathing hard.)
No.
This is something I’ve been concerned about lately as I think it might contribute to my snoring.
I think I have light congestion during the day also, perhaps 20% or so, both sides.
I wonder why it is worse during night (I suppose moving around could have a cleansing effect), and if that’s consistent with the hypothesis that it’s allergy.
If you wake up and one nostril is congested (I’m assuming you’re a side sleeper?) try rolling over to your other side and waiting for a few minutes. In all likelihood, it will clear up but the other nostril will start to get congested. That’s because blood is pooling on that one side while you sleep. When you switch, it starts to pool on the other side.
The poll should really first ask what kind of sleeper people are, because people that sleep on their back won’t notice the effect at all obviously. For people who sleep on their side it probably varies. For me I notice it all the time. For others it might be so slight they don’t notice it at all.
After I first noticed it, it made me wonder if the blood pooling effect is actually what causes people to switch sides during the night without waking up – an automatic rollover cue. In fact, it made me wonder if there is some evolutionary benefit to switching sides a few times during the night. To keep critters at bay who might try to take advantage of your body heat, or something that. Just a thought.
In my experiments there was a correlation between the length of time I slept and the nasil congestion. I have been experimenting with polyphasic/everyman sleep schedules and have no more nasil congestion at all.
I’ve heard this blood theory before, but can’t find medical evidence to show blood pools somewhere causing congestion. I don’t doubt it, I just would like to see a medical article on it.
Asking what type of sleeper they are is starting to get outside the parameters of the experiment. I think it’s better to limit the data to whether people wake up with congestion or not. Keep experiments simple is how I like to do it.
Did some more research in the meantime, and it seems that the closest diagnosis is vasomotor rhinitis.
It’s caused by non-allergic triggers (even smells and temperature changes), and its mechanism is not well-understood. Symptoms occur year-round and there is no known cure.
The only hope seems to be a nasal stent such as the AlaxoLite Nasal Stent. It was tested successfully in Germany and I contacted the doctor who developed it, but due to idiotic FDA regulations, they can’t ship it to the US.
[quote=“Mike, post:13, topic:72”]
Did some more research in the meantime, and it seems that the closest diagnosis is vasomotor rhinitis[/quote]
Mike, my man, self-diagnose yerself with a disease? Even scientifically speaking, you should start with the null-hypothesis that you are healthy until you can prove that there is significant evidence that you have a condition. You need to see an Ear-Nose-Throat specialist to diagnose that. And getting a stint is not necessarily going to solve your problem. Read the scientific journals on that procedure.
I suggest you do what most QSers do when they have a problem. Quantify your symptoms, record a baseline, introduce a variable, A-B-A test the variable and if it works the first time, you did better than most. But most people have to try lots of things for a while before they find what is useful.
Just start getting creative. For example, who would have thought that standing on one leg would reduce insomnia? But Seth Roberts (the one who came up with that idea) is a very creative guy, and he reads a lot of scientific journals too, so that helps a lot when forming a hypothesis. Wikipedia is not necessarily a good source to find evidence based criteria for your self-experimenting.
I used to have that problem and it seems to come and go throughout the year so I only occasionally test it. Some of the things that I have noticed improve the quality is a nasal dilator clip, or snore clip and a nasal dilator strips. Usually that’s for snoring, but it seemed to keep my nose open so I could sleep. At one time I tried taping my mouth while I slept to experiment if my brain would force the nose open while i sleep as there was no other route for air to travel. Can’t breath with your mouth taped. Anyway, those are some ideas for you. Hope it helps.
I think this is a normal phenomenon. I didn’t hear about the blood pooling, but I can confirm that changing the side I am sleeping on the closed side will open and the open side will slightly close. I can repeat that over and over again. So I think the blood pooling seems to be the right answer.
On the other hand in yoga, which focuses a lot on breathing, I also read about this phenomenon , it is also when being wake. It was stated, that the nostrils will change their state approx every 45mins. I think this might be also just some biological rhythm. But we don’t know why our body does such things. Maybe to use both nostrils evenly?
I have trouble sleeping because of this condition, I wake up very often when I roll over to my other side. Almost every night I used nasal drops with Xylometazoline hydrochloride but this is very bad for the nasal mucousa.
4 years ago I went to a specialist and after examining my nose, he explained that my mucosa cells have become larger than usual and because of that they can contain more blood. Because of this and because I have a narrow nose, when I sleep on one of my sides, they fill with blood and restrict the airflow. He recommended simple surgery called Nasal Electrocauterization - they burned my mucosa.
However, the effect was just maybe half an year only. I stopped using nasal drops (because I thought they caused my condition). Now I am only using see water nasal sprays, they help a little bit but the problem still remains.
Hope this is a useful information in some way. I am also looking for more info.
Have you looked into mucus forming foods/versus non-mucus forming foods? I have noticed that things like bread or baked carbs or fried foods often results in mucus congestion. When I eat just raw fruits and vegetables I tend to feel very clear inside.