One cause of post nasal drip that is missed over 90%
Are you struggling to find a post nasal drip cure or have you tried many different post nasal drip “remedies” that never seemed to work? Accurately diagnosing and treating post nasal drip is a challenge for many doctors and patients. A good analogy is like trying to put a together jig saw puzzle. Your doctor has to know all of the pieces and how they fit together. This educational section will help empower you to find the right treatment for your post nasal drip.
You will also find out the one cause of post nasal drip that is missed over 90% of the time by doctors.
What is Post Nasal Drip (PND)?
- Post Nasal Drip
- can be described (in part) as the feeling that something is draining in the back of the throat. Mucus glands in the nose and throat continuously produce mucus throughout the day and night. Normally, people are not aware of the act of swallowing the mucus/phlegm. However, certain conditions can cause patients to become aware of this sensation.
- The feeling of PND may be do to actual mucus or phlegm in the throat or only the perception of it. One of the most common but rarely diagnosed causes of post-nasal drip occurs when the nerve tissue of the throat and voice box becomes damaged- typically by an Upper Respiratory Infection (common cold). This will be discussed below in the section: Laryngeal Sensory Neuropathy (LSN). For these patients, there is usually no actual drainage, mucus, or phlegm. The main symptoms of LSN are throat clearing and coughing that do not respond to other post nasal drip treatments.
What causes Post Nasal Drip (PND)?
Before we can talk about the causes of Post Nasal Drip, we must understand why PND can be such a confusing disorder to diagnose and treat. Some areas of confusion include:
- Post Nasal Drip is a general term given to a group of symptoms that can have many different causes.
- Further complicating matters is that patients may experience 3 or more causes of PND at the same time.
- The following terms are often used interchangeably by patients even though the symptoms and causes of PND may be significantly different from one patient to the next.
- Post Nasal Drip
- Sinus drainage
- Allergies
- Throat clearing / coughing
- Diagnosing and treating PND is like putting a jig-saw puzzle together. The doctor must know all of the different pieces of the puzzle and how they fit together. It is rare for most doctors to understand all of these pieces.
- In other words, PND is really just a name used to describe a group of common symptoms that share many different causes. It does not tell you anything about what the actual cause is. The symptoms of PND listed below can be caused by many different disorders. Clues obtained during the medical history can frequently allow the doctor to diagnose the cause of PND. I will include some of these important clues below.
