How I Stopped a Decades Old Nose Bleed

Objective: If you are plagued with a daily nose bleed, sometimes severe, you may be suffering from the same condition I suffer from.  It has taken me decades to discover what the problem was.  The solution is very simple.

I continued to have daily nose bleeds from “picking my nose” through my 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s. What was happening, obviously, was that the fresh bleed would cause a scab to form which would stop up the air passageway and irritate me until I once again dug it out. Then the process started over again.

While in my 50’s, I had a severe bleed that I could not stop and after several hours of not being able to stop it, my wife drove me to a ear, nose and throat specialist 30 miles away. He was unsuccessful at stopping the bleed in the traditional manners, so he eventually had to cauterize the vessel that was bleeding. He then convinced me that I needed testing for allergies and suggested that I would have to take allergy shots every day for the rest of my life. That thought horrified me and I declined to take the test, having already had a similar test years earlier. He checked me for a deviated septum, but told me that mine was straight.

A couple of years went by and my family physician got involved with the nose at my suggestion. Her answer was very simple and short: Why don’t you try a simple allergy pill such as Claritin. She indicated that allergies were causing my septum to be constantly swollen, thus restricting my air flow, causing me to dig at it with my finger to get more air flow. The digging caused torn flesh which then scabbed over. It just repeated over and over on a daily basis. 

I tried the Claritin and additionally started using Neosporin to try to get the scabs to heal. In addition to that, I started using nasal strips on my nose at night. The brand I use is Breath Easy. These strips spread the nostrils apart, allowing more air to flow, allowing me to sleep the night through without waking up with stopped up nostrils.

Within weeks my left nostril had healed up. I have not had a nose bleed in several years in that nostril. The right nostril took about a year longer, but it is now bleed free. I attribute this success to the doctor’s suggestion to try Claritin and to my use of Breath Easy nose strips. These strips were designed to lessen snoring and they have done that, too.