Chronic dryness and bleeding sores inside nose? This was my cure.
Are you dealing with a chronically dry and bleeding nose, and not just during the dryness of winter? Do you have recurring sores inside your nose? Do you have whiteheads on the outside of your nose that seem to correspond to sore areas inside your nose? That was me.
Let me tell you a story of how I found a cure that worked for me. I share this in case it may help you. Please note that I am not recommending a course of self-treatment. You must take responsibility for the results or complications if your following this or any other course of self-treatment. I am offering it only as a consideration for those out there who, like me, could not be even slightly helped by a medical professional (ENT), even after paying almost $350 of my hard-earned after-tax money. You see, medical professionals are not God. They do not know everything, and they may not know what will work for you. Consult with God before trying this. I am not responsible for you, your treatment, or any complications you may experience. I just know that this worked for me and my physiology.
About a year after the start of this prolonged period of despair and binge eating, I power washed black rubber dust off a balcony. The dust was from black rubber mats that were sitting outside in the sun, and that had started to disintegrate, leaving behind a residue of black rubber dust. After I power washed that residue off the balcony, while drinking pop the entire time instead of water, my nose developed a chronic condition where it was always dry, and almost always there would be blood in the Kleenex after blowing my nose. I didn't realize at the time that this meant there were sores in my nose that never did fully heal. It seemed as if I could never drink enough water. Humidifiers added in my home and at work were never enough. Though I was used to having a dry and sometimes bleeding nose during Michigan winters, now my nose was like this year round.
I went to an ENT, who despite being almost retirement age and therefore a bonafide nose EXPERT, stuck his camera scope up my nose only to say "Well, I don't see anything. No polyps." He didn't do a SINGLE THING TO DIAGNOSE OR HELP MY ISSUE, yet he charged me a major purchase for ... well, for I don't know what. That stick-his-scope-up-my-nose was an almost $350 procedure that was charged separately. It was a procedure not covered by the specialist visit fee that my insurance covered minus a $15 copay, so I ended up having to pay almost $350 out of pocket because my health plan deductible was not yet satisfied for the year. The ENT didn't even tell me before the procedure that there was a separate charge for sticking his camera scope in my nose. He literally robbed me. Had he told me ahead of time that he was going to charge me separately for a $350 procedure, I would have told him "no thanks". In what other industry can you sell a customer a $350 "service" without his prior knowledge of its cost, making him pay for it after the fact? Anyway. It would be one thing if this supposed EXPERT had actually helped me with my issue. I walked out of his office with some oil the gave me to put in my nose, which didn't help one iota though I applied it religiously. So if the expert was relegated to trial-and-error, I figured I was on my own.
After dealing with this nose condition for two years solid, I started noticing early signs of rosacea at age 48. Redness, broken blood vessels on the surface of the skin around the nose, increasing red spots of discoloration on my nose. Recurring whiteheads began showing up both inside and outside my nose. The ones inside the nose were amazingly painful. I often literally had open sores inside my nose, especially in the left nostril. Just pressing on my nose was painful - my nose was always so tender and painful. The open sores had gotten so bad that one of them had a corresponding whitehead on the outside of my nose in that location. This same whitehead kept coming back in the same skin pore that lay directly above the sore inside my nose. Something began telling me this was an infection. It was as if this infection had reached all the way through my nose flesh from the inside of my nose to the outside, and was firmly entrenched. My immune system for some reason wasn't finding and killing this invader. And taking a probiotic and applying vitamin E inside my nose (from the inside of a vitamin E capsule) didn't help, and usually my skin responds very positively to vitamin E. Something was chronically wrong here. After some internet research, I had a hunch that rosacea symptoms may be the result of the body's response to infection or microscopic parasites. Then I remembered something...
I had used Acne.org's "regimen" before, which consists of a facial cleanser, followed by a "treatment" solution of 2.5% Benzoyl Peroxide, followed by a moisturizer lotion - all topical treatments. I remembered how it made my skin feel. I remembered how my skin had responded positively, and how my skin was less oily as a result of the regimen. The Acne.org Benzoyl Peroxide treatment had made my skin tingle - I remembered how I could feel it working.
Something told me that I should try the Acne.org Benzoyl Peroxide treatment INSIDE my nose. Yeah, I know. But I had a very strong feeling that this WOULD work. It's hard to explain. I had a rare sense of confidence that I needed to do this. So I ordered the Acne. org "regimen", and started doing the following once to twice daily:
2. After waiting for a few minutes for my face to completely dry, I applied the Acne.org 2.5% Benzoyl Peroxide "treatment" on the outside of my face (avoiding getting too close to the eyes), ensuring I got all around the nose where I was experiencing Rosacea symptoms.
3. I then used q-tips to to apply the Acne.org 2.5% Benzoyl Peroxide "treatment" to the inside of my nose. It tended to sting a little more inside the nose than outside the nose, but it felt like a GOOD stinging, analogous to the sting of putting hydrogen peroxide solution on a wound to kill bacteria. Using q-tips, I coated the inside of the nose all around the inside of each nostril. I started with a shallow application, and over the course of a week progressively applied the Benzoyl Peroxide solution deeper and deeper into the nose, to ensure I got the areas that were chronically sore and often bleeding. I have a slightly deviated septum, and found one of the worst areas of sores was a pocket at the top of the left nostril near the cartilage/bone transition.
4. I followed the Benzoyl Peroxide treatment with the Acne.org moisturizing lotion on my face.
5. Inside my nose, I followed the Benzoyl Peroxide treatment with moisturizing lotion applied with a q-tip. After a few minutes of letting it sit, I would blow the excess out of my nose into a Kleenex. I used the Acne.org moisturizer, but I'm not a big fan of it because it is kind of sticky/greasy and has a scent to it that I don't like. But I was too lazy to try to find another moisturizer, except sometimes I used jojoba oil instead.
As an aside, it should be noted that I no longer drink pop or tea (including my favorite, Arnold Palmers). You see, any time I drink any caffeinated drink, I immediately notice my nose is uncomfortably dry over the next 24 hours, no matter how much water I drink. Too much caffeine also makes my muscles tight and achy. My physiology can just not handle caffeine anymore. I only drink an occasional Dr. Pepper or Pepsi to self-medicate whenever I have a headache. The caffeine makes my headache go away 90% of the time.
Also, in conjunction with the above, I bought two Venta airwashers to keep the air as humidified as possible, yet in a healthy way. Venta airwashers do not over-humidify the air because they rely on cold air evaporation rather than heat or sonic hedgehog technology. The humidity helps and is necessary, but it was not sufficient on its own to cure my nose.
Let me tell you a story of how I found a cure that worked for me. I share this in case it may help you. Please note that I am not recommending a course of self-treatment. You must take responsibility for the results or complications if your following this or any other course of self-treatment. I am offering it only as a consideration for those out there who, like me, could not be even slightly helped by a medical professional (ENT), even after paying almost $350 of my hard-earned after-tax money. You see, medical professionals are not God. They do not know everything, and they may not know what will work for you. Consult with God before trying this. I am not responsible for you, your treatment, or any complications you may experience. I just know that this worked for me and my physiology.
Here's My Story
Several years ago, after binge eating at McDonald's while battling despair (i.e. I ate lunch there two to three days in a row, each time ordering as much as my stomach could hold), I came down with hand foot and mouth disease. It's a nasty virus that causes you to break out on your skin in only those three locations. It's bad. You pretty much can't sleep at night. In another instance, I got a bacterial infection on my face that caused my eyelid to swell closed. A year after the hand foot and mouth infection, I contracted another virus, shingles, on my face after another episode of binge eating at McDonald's. Not only shingles, but shingles coupled with a bacterial infection that got dangerously close to my eye. Obviously this wasn't healthy (McDonald's has to be some of the world's worst foods, even as recently as 2016), and obviously my face was getting infected often.About a year after the start of this prolonged period of despair and binge eating, I power washed black rubber dust off a balcony. The dust was from black rubber mats that were sitting outside in the sun, and that had started to disintegrate, leaving behind a residue of black rubber dust. After I power washed that residue off the balcony, while drinking pop the entire time instead of water, my nose developed a chronic condition where it was always dry, and almost always there would be blood in the Kleenex after blowing my nose. I didn't realize at the time that this meant there were sores in my nose that never did fully heal. It seemed as if I could never drink enough water. Humidifiers added in my home and at work were never enough. Though I was used to having a dry and sometimes bleeding nose during Michigan winters, now my nose was like this year round.
I went to an ENT, who despite being almost retirement age and therefore a bonafide nose EXPERT, stuck his camera scope up my nose only to say "Well, I don't see anything. No polyps." He didn't do a SINGLE THING TO DIAGNOSE OR HELP MY ISSUE, yet he charged me a major purchase for ... well, for I don't know what. That stick-his-scope-up-my-nose was an almost $350 procedure that was charged separately. It was a procedure not covered by the specialist visit fee that my insurance covered minus a $15 copay, so I ended up having to pay almost $350 out of pocket because my health plan deductible was not yet satisfied for the year. The ENT didn't even tell me before the procedure that there was a separate charge for sticking his camera scope in my nose. He literally robbed me. Had he told me ahead of time that he was going to charge me separately for a $350 procedure, I would have told him "no thanks". In what other industry can you sell a customer a $350 "service" without his prior knowledge of its cost, making him pay for it after the fact? Anyway. It would be one thing if this supposed EXPERT had actually helped me with my issue. I walked out of his office with some oil the gave me to put in my nose, which didn't help one iota though I applied it religiously. So if the expert was relegated to trial-and-error, I figured I was on my own.
After dealing with this nose condition for two years solid, I started noticing early signs of rosacea at age 48. Redness, broken blood vessels on the surface of the skin around the nose, increasing red spots of discoloration on my nose. Recurring whiteheads began showing up both inside and outside my nose. The ones inside the nose were amazingly painful. I often literally had open sores inside my nose, especially in the left nostril. Just pressing on my nose was painful - my nose was always so tender and painful. The open sores had gotten so bad that one of them had a corresponding whitehead on the outside of my nose in that location. This same whitehead kept coming back in the same skin pore that lay directly above the sore inside my nose. Something began telling me this was an infection. It was as if this infection had reached all the way through my nose flesh from the inside of my nose to the outside, and was firmly entrenched. My immune system for some reason wasn't finding and killing this invader. And taking a probiotic and applying vitamin E inside my nose (from the inside of a vitamin E capsule) didn't help, and usually my skin responds very positively to vitamin E. Something was chronically wrong here. After some internet research, I had a hunch that rosacea symptoms may be the result of the body's response to infection or microscopic parasites. Then I remembered something...
I had used Acne.org's "regimen" before, which consists of a facial cleanser, followed by a "treatment" solution of 2.5% Benzoyl Peroxide, followed by a moisturizer lotion - all topical treatments. I remembered how it made my skin feel. I remembered how my skin had responded positively, and how my skin was less oily as a result of the regimen. The Acne.org Benzoyl Peroxide treatment had made my skin tingle - I remembered how I could feel it working.
Something told me that I should try the Acne.org Benzoyl Peroxide treatment INSIDE my nose. Yeah, I know. But I had a very strong feeling that this WOULD work. It's hard to explain. I had a rare sense of confidence that I needed to do this. So I ordered the Acne. org "regimen", and started doing the following once to twice daily:
The Self Treatment
1. I applied the Acne.org cleanser on the outside of my face to remove facial oils, rinsing thoroughly and dabbing my face dry.2. After waiting for a few minutes for my face to completely dry, I applied the Acne.org 2.5% Benzoyl Peroxide "treatment" on the outside of my face (avoiding getting too close to the eyes), ensuring I got all around the nose where I was experiencing Rosacea symptoms.
3. I then used q-tips to to apply the Acne.org 2.5% Benzoyl Peroxide "treatment" to the inside of my nose. It tended to sting a little more inside the nose than outside the nose, but it felt like a GOOD stinging, analogous to the sting of putting hydrogen peroxide solution on a wound to kill bacteria. Using q-tips, I coated the inside of the nose all around the inside of each nostril. I started with a shallow application, and over the course of a week progressively applied the Benzoyl Peroxide solution deeper and deeper into the nose, to ensure I got the areas that were chronically sore and often bleeding. I have a slightly deviated septum, and found one of the worst areas of sores was a pocket at the top of the left nostril near the cartilage/bone transition.
4. I followed the Benzoyl Peroxide treatment with the Acne.org moisturizing lotion on my face.
5. Inside my nose, I followed the Benzoyl Peroxide treatment with moisturizing lotion applied with a q-tip. After a few minutes of letting it sit, I would blow the excess out of my nose into a Kleenex. I used the Acne.org moisturizer, but I'm not a big fan of it because it is kind of sticky/greasy and has a scent to it that I don't like. But I was too lazy to try to find another moisturizer, except sometimes I used jojoba oil instead.
Results
I started seeing results very quickly. After 1 week, the reoccurring whiteheads were gone. After two weeks, my nose was no longer tender to the touch, and there was almost no blood after blowing my nose. After three weeks, my nose started feeling normal for the first time in over two years.As an aside, it should be noted that I no longer drink pop or tea (including my favorite, Arnold Palmers). You see, any time I drink any caffeinated drink, I immediately notice my nose is uncomfortably dry over the next 24 hours, no matter how much water I drink. Too much caffeine also makes my muscles tight and achy. My physiology can just not handle caffeine anymore. I only drink an occasional Dr. Pepper or Pepsi to self-medicate whenever I have a headache. The caffeine makes my headache go away 90% of the time.
Also, in conjunction with the above, I bought two Venta airwashers to keep the air as humidified as possible, yet in a healthy way. Venta airwashers do not over-humidify the air because they rely on cold air evaporation rather than heat or sonic hedgehog technology. The humidity helps and is necessary, but it was not sufficient on its own to cure my nose.
