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I had similar breathing problems. I could not breath through my nose. It turned out I had a deviated septum and a bulbous turbinate on one side. It was hollow in the middle and filled up most of the nasal cavity. So I had a septoplasty and turbinate reduction about 4 years ago. Now I can breathe out both sides most of the time. But I still wake up frequently with a dry mouth from a lifetime habit of mouth breathing. Ten years on CPAP and still struggling with high pressures, mouth breathing, and masks leaks. But I got a good result with the sinus surgery.

I think a good starting point is getting off Afrin.

"Many people say they have repeatedly tried to quit using Afrin or Neo-Synephrine without success. Some report that they have broken the habit by discontinuing the spray in one nostril at a time or by progressively diluting the product with saline solution.

Simply stopping cold turkey will usually defuse the rebound cycle in a week or two, Dr. Goldstein said, but a lot of patients cannot resist the urge to spray in the meantime.

"What I do in such cases," he said, "is insist that they stop the nasal spray and put them on a five-day course of an oral steroid like prednisone" that will usually relieve the stuffiness until the rebound is gone."

I once spent the most miserable 5 days of my life getting off Neo-Senephrine. It was a HORRIBLE experience. I was at the point where I had to put a drop in my nose every 1/2 hour to breathe and the rebound was terrible. I had to gradually increase the time between drops--35 minutes, 40 minutes, 45 minutes, etc. Torture. I have no experience with heroine or other drugs like that, but this seemed just as bad to me, crazy as that sounds.

I will never, ever put anything except saline nasal spray in my nose again. Who knew that nose drops could be so insidious?

Janknitz wrote:I once spent the most miserable 5 days of my life getting off Neo-Senephrine. It was a HORRIBLE experience.

Yep...only I have done it (going off the Afrin and living through Afrin rebound) more than once...probably more times than I want to count over the years and I worked in the medical field and I did know better. It's so frigging easy to get yourself hooked even if you know what is happening.

99.999% of the time I stick to saline spray or Flonase....in an emergency situation I have been known to resort to the teeniest tiniest bit of Afrin and only in one nostril and only one night. If I can't breathe through my nose I simply can't sleep. Should I happen to have to resort to emergency measures I always find that by morning I am breathing so much better because cranking up the humidity has always helped me.

Back when I first started, newbies were often advised to use saline rhino irrigation for stuffy nose issues.

I started off using a Nasaline syringe type irrigator.


Then I decided to upgrade to the highly recommended Grossan HydroPulse.


The HydroPulse is really nice ... once you get use to the feeling of water running through your nose, the HydroPulse is like a soothing mini massage throughout your nasal cavity. I think that WaterPik now sells attachments for nasal irrigation ... which is basically what the Grossan HydroPulse is -- a Water Pik system.

The Nasaline syringe works well however for those on a budget ... just without the mini nasal cavity massage.

I've not used either in over 3+ years now. After I started practicing periodic and extended fasting, my sinuses stay clear 99.99% of the time. The primary cause of autoimmune and allergy disorders starts in the gut.