LIVING NATURALLY with Olwen Anderson

DID you catch a cold this past winter? If you did, you know how long it takes to really sweep away the last remants of snuffly nose symptoms or hacking cough, and how easily that acute illness can become chronic.

You can find yourself still buying lots of tissues weeks or months later. Those bugs seem to have set up a comfortable home in your sinuses. Why is this?

Packed around and behind your nose and eyes, right up into your forehead, is a complex of interconnected cave-like arrangements that form your collective sinuses. So many crypts, they have their own addresses: there's the maxillary, sphenoidal, ethmoidal and frontal sinuses.

They all have slightly different functions but three big jobs: to create resonating chambers that amplify your voice, to warm and filter incoming air on its way to your lungs and to wipe out invading bacteria, viruses, fungi and allergens.

There's even a section called the turbinates, whose role is to swirl air around so any suspect particles are more likely to get stuck in the mucous membrane. (Rather like your own internal cyclonic vacuum, don't you think?) The nerves powering your sense of smell are also located in one of the sinuses.

All of these chambers are lined with mucous membranes, constantly producing sticky mucous to engulf unwanted microbes and particles and also watery mucous to wash them out.

Residing here are the patrol team of your immune system, the immunoglobulins. Upon encountering the 'enemy', whether microbes or allergens, they respond to the threat by causing the production of even more mucus. Their aim: flush out the problem.

When those mucous membranes become inflamed and swollen from fighting this battle, drainage can become blocked and pressure builds up. This is how a sinus headache can develop or you'll have to keep employing lots of tissues to mop up the ongoing flood of mucous. Or both.

When you catch a cold, there's likely to be a residual colony of bugs that would just love to get comfortable in one of the nooks and crannies of your sinuses. They can produce just enough ongoing discomfort to make your life miserable.

The longer left untreated, the more established the problem becomes and the longer it takes to wipe it out.

This is one health problem that calls for persistence and diligence in treatment.

So keep up your cold and flu treatment until your sinuses are completely cleared. Don't let those bugs get comfortable.

Olwen Anderson is a naturopath and counsellor. www.olwenanderson.com.au