Sinus pain and pressure are a serious problem for many patients I see in the office. This may be due to colds, allergies or a sinus infection. Along with using pain medicine (such as Tylenol or Motrin), allergy medications and decongestants, these massage techniques may also help you feel immediate relieve by decreasing your sinus pain and pressure.
Hi there i’m dr tahir thank you so much for joining me today i’m a board certified pediatrician and today i’ll be talking to you guys about a very important topic and that involves congestion and pressure and pain in the sinuses i see a lot of patients coming in with this concern and that’s because a lot of different things can cause problems like that for example
If you have a cold a virus infection for example or an upper respiratory infection that can cause swelling of all of the linings that we have inside our nose that causes congestion causes a lot of mucus production we have the same linings inside our sinuses which are hollow spaces or empty spaces in our facial bones so there’s hollow spaces up here these are the
Frontal sinuses there’s also how the spaces behind our nose deep into our skull and also spaces uh in our cheekbones and that’s called the maxillary sinuses so when we catch a cold for example and we get swelling or inflammation of the skin in our nose and we get congestion and runny nose well the same thing is happening in the linings of the sinuses that can
Cause pressure buildup in those areas and sometimes when the openings of those little spaces are clogged with mucus for example or swelling there’s nowhere for that pressure to go and that causes a lot of pain and discomfort if you’re experiencing that and so when you have sinus congestion and pain you might be getting headaches you might be getting pain in your
Cheekbones you might be getting pain and pressure behind your eyes have you seen sometimes or have you yourself seen yourself sometimes sit there with a headache and put pressure on your head or sometimes over your bones or your cheekbones when you have a cold or congestion well you’re kind of doing something always talking to you guys about today and that’s helping
To relieve some of that pressure along with colds allergies can also commonly cause congestion and pain like that because they also swell up the lining of your nose and the sinuses so allergies are very common sinus infections also can be a problem sinus infections happen when a virus or bacteria infect the linings of your sinuses and that can cause a lot of pain
Or pressure too most of the sinus infections are actually viruses and they go away by themselves but sometimes you need antibiotics for treatment there’s lots of ways of creating congestion pain and pressure so for example if you have a cold you could try taking somebody congestant medications if you’re old enough or if your child is old enough for that you can also
Try spraying some nasa saline spray in your nose and that helps to break down the mucus that may also help decrease the congestion and the pressure that you guys might be feeling if you have allergies for example you might need to take an allergy medication so that helps decrease some of the swelling in your sinuses and also your nose there’s also allergies no
Sprays that you might be able to use so depending on what’s going on different medications can help you with that there’s also essential oil that you can use and essential oil inhalers that you can use but that’s a topic for a different day okay so those are some things that you can use to help decrease some of your pain you can also use pain medication of course
And that is ibuprofen which is commonly known as motrin or acetaminophen with a common brand name of tylenol for example so you can use those for pain too now whatever you do whatever type of pain medication or other treatments you use for pressure of your sinuses there’s also one more thing that you can do that will potentially help you a lot and that is doing
Some sinus massages massaging of the sinuses can help relieve some of the pain that you’re having and pressure you’re having immediately as part of the sinus pressure pain that you might feel on the nose a lot of times people get congestion of the ears and ear pain too so today i’ll be showing you a technique about ears ear massages too there’s a separate video
That i made on this long time ago and that video about the ear massage technique is actually one of the most commonly watched videos i have on my channel i’ll put a link on that video down below but for today i want you to also incorporate that as part of a sinus massage technique all right so now let’s talk about the sinus massages basically what you’ll be doing
Is using hand pressure and finger pressure to press gently on your sinuses not so hard that you’re gonna get you’re going to get bruises and leave fingerprints on your skin but not gentle enough that it doesn’t do anything you have to put a little bit of pressure on so you feel some resistance and also you’ll feel the effect of this right away too effect might
Include uh lessening of your pain it might feel like less pressure and that happens because there is drainage happening of fluid and also air through the passages that might have been blocked so to do this i’ll be taking off my glasses so i can show you easier okay first what you’ll want to do is gently rub your fingers together in case your fingers are cold or
You can put your hands under some warm running water just so that your fingers are nice and warm the warm temperature will also help with the massage and may also help with the dry image okay so first thing you’ll want to do is with your fingers nice and warm like that take your fingers take the first three fingers and put your fingers on top of your frontal
Sinuses which are going to be above the eyebrows and toward the center of your forehead so think about this area here on both sides okay about that area so what you’ll do is put your fingers there press onto your bone of your head or your skull and simply keep pressure on there for about 10 seconds six five four three two one and gently let go you can also put
Pressure right over here by your temples and you press kind of inward so one two three four ten and then also take your thumbs and put pressure on the ridges of your eyebrows so that’s the bone that’s above on the top here of your eyes and push upward and inward so you’ll be going like that a little bit so use both your thumbs and put some pressure upward and
Inward toward the center of your forehead with both your thumbs for about 10 seconds and that helps with the sinuses that are up here the frontal sinuses you also have sinuses that go deeper into the skull and that are behind you the bridge of your nose so for that what you’ll be doing is putting pressure and some compression on the bridge of your nose that’s
The body part of your nose that’s right up right up here that’s about the upper half of your bone so putting pressure down here is not really going to help that much can’t talk very much like that but putting pressure up here is the key so that’s the body part of the nose to do that there’s a couple ways i found helpful one is you simply pinch your nose with
Your thumb and your middle finger or thumb or and your index finger so i usually like to use the thumb and the middle finger i can put better pressure with that and what you’ll be doing is kind of grabbing just the very top portion of your nose just before the eyebrows start here and you simply compress your nose inward and also push it back a little bit toward
Inside of your head okay so you’d be pushing it in your head and also compressing it a little bit and hold that for about 10 seconds six seven eight nine and ten the other way to do it is use both your fingers like this both your hands rather and compress on your nasal bones on the bridge of your nose and uh inward and also upward a little bit okay so you’re kind
Of directing pressure in and up so we’ll go like that two three four nine and ten the next sinus is you want to target are your maxillary sinuses and those are the sinuses that are behind your cheekbones the cheekbones are the bones that you feel directly underneath your eyes and above your jaws these cheekbones have spaces inside them which are the maxillary
Sinuses so these are common sites of infection by the way so what you’ll do is put your finger pads of your fingers on both your cheekbones and just press inward like that one two three four six eight nine and ten you can also press inward so starting on the sides a little bit just just press inward like that so we’ll do that for about 10 seconds two three four
Six seven eight and ten all right so that targets the sinuses up here the sinuses behind the bridge of your nose and the sinuses inside your cheekbones okay other thing i want to show you that’s really important and there’s a separate video about that which i made and i’ll link it down in the comments below is massaging the area of your eustachian tube that’s the
Tube that connects the ear to the back of the nose of the throat and that goes inside the skull and when that gets clogged your ear gets pressure and ear gets clogged also so the massaging technique for that is you take your fingertips and if you put some olive oil or some kind of massage oil on your hand it might be easier because your fingers will slide across
Your skin and so what you do is you put your fingers behind the ears like that and you gently rub downward you put some pressure in towards your neck and you slide your fingers down to the angle of the jaw just like that the angle of the jaw is where your jaw is changing from going mostly down to front so this corner right here is the angle of the jaw so you’ll
Take your fingers and you move simply down like that there now what’s nice is you can do both sides together at one time and you can do this for yourself or you can do this for your child i show a lot of parents how to do this when i see their kids for ear infections and ear pain and most parents don’t know about this at all and it is shocking how many people this
Has helped so making the ear massage technique as part of your sinus massage technique is very helpful because it helps to decongest all the common areas that we get congestion at all right thank you so much for joining me today i hope that you found this video helpful and i hope these techniques help you and your kids feel better if you like this video make sure
That you press like on the video and also share a comment of your experience please share this video and channel with your friends and family have a wonderful day bye
Transcribed from video
Dr. T's Sinus Pain And Pressure Massage Technique By Kids Health By Dr. Tahir