Category: Archive

After reaching my early thirties without much illness, I found after moving back to Seattle from the Bay Area that things would change forever. Perhaps it was:

a.) losing my dad two weeks after moving back

b.) the stress of having an 8 month old and 3 year old

c.) a weakening immune system

d.) all of the above!

Personally, I think the correct answer was d.) all of the above. Almost immediately as luck would have it, I developed back to back sinus infections soon after being in Seattle and both would need treatment with antibiotics. Unfortunately, that was just the beginning!

A little off topic but not, can anyone explain to me why the doctors never advised me to resupply my body with probiotics after taking antibiotics? This would have helped repopulate my gut with the proper bacteria to strengthen my immune system! (especially after taking antibiotics that wipe out both good and bad bacteria!) Here is a Reader’s Digest article and U.S. News & World Report article covering the use of probiotics along with antibiotics. 

Okay back the topic…overtime and multiple illnesses, I realized that once a virus got a hold of my body, it would without a doubt take up residence in my right sinus. And I would not get better unless I “evicted” this pathogen out of my sinus! I figured out that nasal irrigation would soon become my friend. However, even that was becoming less effective which a Baylor School of Medicine article that I recently came across actually confirmed what I was experiencing.

So I learned to live with what I believe is to be a low-grade sinus infection causing inflammation but no other symptoms. (Okay, admittedly this is self-diagnosed.)

Finally, this is where Röder Therapy comes in. So what is this Röder Therapy? 

Röder Therapy

Röder Therapy is performed with a cotton wool swab soaked in Röder tincture (consisting of eucalyptus, goldenseal and echinacea), which is used to probe the paranasal sinuses through the nostrils. The treatment improves blood circulation in the nasal mucous membrane, thus helping to prevent infections of the upper respiratory tract in general. (Source: Buchinger Wilhelmi Booklet)

After my doctor completed this therapy which took all of 30 seconds, she asked if I had problems with my sinuses because my right nostril was completely closed and inflamed. Of course, my response was “Yes!” (I held back my desire to explain that viruses enjoy using my right nostril like an extended vacation rental…) That was such an a-ha moment for me introducing this knowledge that we could be doing more with the sinus passages for healing. 

I asked if there was something I could do on my own to help reduce the inflammation because I won’t have access to doctors that perform Röder Therapy back home. She walks away and brings me a bottle of liquid probiotic with a dropper! That is so genius! She tells me to administer 5 drops, 3 times a day into each nostril and then take 20 drops orally first swishing around my mouth and then swallowing morning and night. After two days, I could actually breathe through both nostrils! Wow! What a concept! Why isn’t this therapy more commonly used in the States? Chris Kresser goes into more detail about the importance of having a healthy microbiome in the sinus which is where probiotics come into play versus trying to attack a single pathogen.

Here is the probiotic I am using here in Germany for my sinus.

Sourcing something similar is going to be challenging once at home, and I am already on my second bottle! The good news is I am about 95% cured!

At the end of my stay, my doctor at the clinic said she would discuss with me how to treat my issue ongoing once I return home. Until then, happy breathing!

With the diagnosis of my husband with Type II Diabetes at the age of 34, it was our first exposure to “standard of care” in medicine. Already, he did not meet the “typical” patient as he was a marathon runner weighing in around 155 pounds with a height of  5’10”. But nevermind that, the doctor prescribed Metformin and tells us we must attend 2 classes of diabetes courses to help with nutrition.

Well, Metformin made my husband (Steve) feel terrible from Day 1. It was the worst he had felt in a very long time. Then on top of that, the classes tell us it is perfectly fine to eat bagels and drink orange juice. We realize very quickly this only causes horrendous spikes in insulin! It was the worst advice we had received (along with eating 5 to 6 small meals a day) and when we challenged the advice were we met with resistance. Our voice wasn’t heard, and we stopped listening as well. The search began for another way, hopefully a better way…one that would try to get to the actual root cause.

This lead to two books that were groundbreaking for us at that time:

• Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution: The Complete Guide to Achieving Normal Blood Sugars (Originally published in 1997)
• The Schwarzbein Principle: The Truth about Losing Weight, Being Healthy and Feeling Younger (Originally published in 1999)

It has been a while since I read these books but they helped open our eyes to approaching our well-being with much more care than accepting everything as truth from the medical establishment. More importantly though, these books gave us confidence. Confidence to make decisions that may be counter to the medical establishment despite wishing it could be a partnership. There is a great article on modern medicine just published in The Guardian that talks about the need for medicine to make patient preferences a priority.

Thankfully, there is a lot of information available now but not everything will work for your lifestyle or will resonate with you. At the end, you will have to decide for yourself what makes sense moving forward.