Hydrogen Peroxide & Chronic Sinusitis

50 years of sinus congestion, gone overnight.

Sinusitis simply means that your sinuses are inflamed. Mine were inflamed pretty much year round for decades, when I tripped over a cure.

Around 1968, my family moved to an area near Casteau, Belgium that was located in a vast birch forest. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was soon to become acutely aware of my sensitivity to birch pollen. It would be the first of many seasonal allergies from which I suffered for many years, until they were resolved in 2018 as a side benefit of chiropractic treatment which corrected a very severe ventricular arrhythmia.

Since my years living in Belgium, I had experienced more or less constantly congested sinuses. Fortunately for me, I didn’t have the pressure headaches experienced by so many sinusitis sufferers. I was just stuffed up a lot, my voice sounded very nasally and I would breathe through my mouth way too much.

Over the years, I saw three different allergists for my allergic sensitivities (dust, mold, dander and pollen), to get shots to hopefully desensitize me to common allergens. All three docs commented on my swollen nasal passages and the occasional polyp, but thankfully the polyps weren’t yet bad enough that they warranted treatment (surgical removal). Though I often wonder if I would be so lucky today, with every polyp, wart, and pimple having been turned into a profitable billable procedure, ever since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).

The desensitization treatment only worked marginally. In the end, the only significant relief offered by any of the allergists for my sinusitis or my allergies was the newest antihistamine-du-jour.

The first iteration of such drugs needed a prescription and made me very sleepy. Later over-the-counter versions would dry me out a little too much. Newer versions tend to be a bit better, but still have some side effects.

Because of the side effects, I would only use them when pollen counts were high. In those times, I was miserable without them. It’s rare that I thank Big Pharma for much, but antihistamines are one class of drugs that helped me through 50 years of often challenging allergy seasons. Of course, it turns out that it was possible for me to have avoided over 95% of the discomfort I experienced, and without their drugs.

While fixing my heart issues had ended my seasonal allergies, I was still chronically congested most of the year. And at that point in my life, I had long considered congested sinuses to be normal, and not something that needed to be fixed. Since I didn’t perceive it as a problem, I wasn’t seeking a solution.

Nebulizing

I think it was sometime around late 2020 or early 2021 when

Dr. Joseph Mercola

published a protocol about nebulizing hydrogen peroxide to resolve any respiratory viral infection (likely even a chimeric man-made one).¹ The specific protocol included making a dilute solution of hydrogen peroxide, as follows:

• 1/4 teaspoon of 3% food-grade hydrogen peroxide, and

• 7 1/4 teaspoons (about an ounce and a half) of normal saline.

That results in a .1% hydrogen peroxide concentration. There are others who recommend significantly higher concentrations of hydrogen peroxide, but this concentration was sufficient to resolve my chronic sinusitis. Higher concentrations risk creating cellular damage, especially if used for prolonged periods.

To keep from having to make up a new batch of solution every time that my wife or I nebulized, I increased the above formula by a factor of four, and store the product in a small, dark brown dropper bottle that I keep tucked in a drawer and away from light sources:

• 1 teaspoon of hydrogen peroxide,

• 6 ounces of normal saline.²

After adding a sufficient amount of the above solution into the nebulizer, I also add one drop of Lugol’s Iodine. How much of the solution is sufficient depends upon how long you plan to nebulize. Ten minutes should be plenty of time. If you add too little, you’ll run out and will need to stop and add a bit more. It’s best to just use a little more than you think you’ll need, as the ingredients are pretty inexpensive.

The first time I had an opportunity to use this protocol was in 2021, when it felt like I might be starting to have a respiratory infection. I used it four times over a 24 hour period. The result was that the respiratory infection never materialized, and my sinuses were clearer than they had been in over 50 years! And they have pretty much stayed that way. I now nebulize very infrequently (about once per year), yet for the past four years my sinuses have remained clear!

That was pretty amazing, because not long before I purchased my nebulizer, I had just finished reading James Nestor’s book, Breath.³ I had been predominantly a mouth breather for decades, and had tried unsuccessfully to utilize any of the tips in his book to overcome the problem. But the nebulized hydrogen peroxide did the trick in a few hours.

Side Benefit

Most cures have side benefits, and this cure was no different.

For many years prior to this, I had a small light brown patch of skin below my right eye, which at least three dermatologists could not explain. In recent years, it had started to get larger and was ominously turning darker and grayer, and becoming a lot more noticeable. Shortly after the nebulization, it mostly disappeared and was considerably smaller than I can ever recall having noticed it. My speculation is that the patch was likely being caused by some sort of infection in the sinus behind it, and once that infection was cleared out, the problem resolved.

It is likely that the infection that caused my sinusitis had probably been hidden from my immune system for decades by a biofilm. The hydrogen peroxide treatments destroyed the biofilm, and my immune system was finally able to get access to the infection and clear it out. End result: no more sinus inflammation, plus clearer skin!

Conclusion

At the time all this happened, my bare-bones health insurance basically meant that I was paying out of pocket for nearly all of my medical expenses. The amount I paid for my Pari nebulizer and supplies was no more than what I would have paid just to talk to my primary care physician. So it was a cost that was very easy for me to justify. Someone with great insurance, who rarely pays for anything out of pocket, might think otherwise. If so, hopefully they have a creative physician who can figure out how to have insurance pay for their nebulizer.

While the most direct benefit to me was in my lower sinuses, nebulizing also helped clear up my upper sinuses as well. For that reason, nebulizing is probably the better way to go, rather than just finding a way to spray the nebulizing solution direct into your nostrils. Depending upon where an infection could be lurking, spraying may not get any hydrogen peroxide directly to it. You will need the fine aerosol mist of the nebulizer in order to get into the far corners of your sinuses.

A neti pot is a potentially cheaper option that might have resolved my sinusitis. But I have no idea how easy it is to get used to running fluid through your sinuses (I’d rather not know), or whether it works for the upper sinuses. Besides, my original purpose for the nebulizer was to knock back a respiratory virus, which I haven’t heard claimed is possible with a neti pot (perhaps it is).

While that original Mercola article touted nebulized hydrogen peroxide as a means of stopping a viral infection, I’ve subsequently found that frequent dosing of Vitamin C to be cheaper and easier, and probably as effective. I’ll always reach for the Vitamin C first, and bring out the nebulizer only if things haven’t improved significantly within several hours.

Postscript

erin

asked for details about my nebulizer after I first published this article.

NOTE: I provided the following details, but then she discovered that these nebulizers now need a prescription! My suspicion is that this is the FDA acting to protect the vested interests, and to eliminate this option when the next manmade chimeric virus is accidentally released. Earlier, 35% hydrogen peroxide was removed from store shelves in response to the increased demand after people read The One Minute Cure. That too, sounds like the FDA’s handiwork.

Mercola’s article recommended Pari nebulizers, because not all of the cheap Chinese knock-offs available at the time were particularly effective. I ordered mine in 2020, so that may no longer be the case. I think he specifically recommended the Trek S, which I ordered from Nebology.com. It was also necessary to order a face mask adapter, so that you can simultaneously inhale the mist nasally and orally. The total current cost is $85, with free shipping. That’s less than I paid nearly five years ago.

There is an optional, very expensive battery available, but it is not necessary. The unit can be powered from a wall outlet, you just have to deal with the clunky power wire.

When I logged on to get the links, I was offered a chance to get a 10% off coupon. There is also a 30% off coupon SPRING30, which is valid until March 11th, 2025. That brings the current cost down to $59.50.

I didn’t get charged sales tax on my order, so it may be they only collect taxes for the state where they are located (and I’m not sure where that is).

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For a great book on the many uses and benefits of hydrogen peroxide, check out The One Minute Cure: The Secret to Healing Virtually All Diseases (2021) by Madison Cavanaugh. Or check out this recent post by

Pierre Kory, MD, MPA

(paywalled) for a great article about other oxidative therapies.

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Disclaimer: I write about my personal experiences, and what works for me may not work for you. I have no healthcare training, but I’ve been reading passionately on healthcare since being diagnosed with melanoma in early 2004. My personal experience has been that our healthcare system has failed me far more often than it has helped me. I share my personal experiences, not as advice, but as an example of how others can also find effective solutions to their own problems, if they find that such help is lacking in our healthcare system.

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Revision History:

2025 Mar 9 - Added the Postscript.

2025 Apr 11 - Added a footnote explaining what normal saline is.

1. The formula given here is from a similar version of that original article, which was published in 2023. The article also includes specific recommendations for the brand of nebulizer, since a lot of cheap versions on Amazon aren’t particularly effective.

2. Normal saline is distilled water containing .9% sodium chloride.

3. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art (2020) by James Nestor, or see

Lies are Unbekoming

’s book summary.