Vitanics ad: Glue in your throat? Read this first ☝️

On a Tuesday in March I turned my scope screen around, told a 66 year old woman the glue in her throat was just allergies, and wrote my 3,812th prescription for a daily steroid spray. She'd been clearing it every morning for six years. I'm 61, I've been an ENT for 18 years, and it was the most ordinary thing I did all week. "Everything looks fine," I said. "We'll keep it managed." I've said those two sentences to more women than I can count. I can name some of what they cost. A church soloist who stopped singing, then sat in the back pew at her own granddaughter's christening so nobody would hear the noise. Three weeks later a colleague turned her scope screen around on me. There it was. A pale, flat layer glued to the back wall of my own throat. The same thing I'd shown that woman in March and called allergies. "It's time to start the spray," she said. "Every day." "No." I've practiced in Vermont for 18 years, mostly looking down the throats of women between 55 and 80. I've had the glue myself for four years, and I have never once filled a prescription for it. Then she did something nobody does for a woman with mucus. She pulled up four years of my own scope stills and put them side by side. A faint film in one corner. Then a third of the wall. Then half. Next to them, the CT she'd ordered for my cough two winters ago. Every one was read in our own building, and every one was called fine on the day it was taken. Mild mucosal thickening. Within normal limits. Unremarkable. She put her finger on each one. The layer had gotten bigger every single year. Then she asked me something nobody had ever asked me. "When you clear it, how long before it's back?" Minutes. It had been minutes for about two years. I told myself it was the dry clinic air and talking all day. In 18 years I have asked a patient that question maybe twice. My colleagues are going to hate this post. Every quarter I get a number for how many of my chronic patients are on a maintenance spray. The more women I put on it, the better I look. Nobody has ever scored me on how many of them can still sing in church ten years later. If you don't want to spray something up your nose every morning for the rest of your life, or you've been doing it for years and you're still clearing, this is for you. I didn't want it either. Not at 61, not forever, not for a problem I'm supposed to be the expert in. In April the layer covered half the back wall of my throat. By August my colleague had to hunt for it. I got there without the spray, and without one more week of the Mucinex, rinses and steam that never touched it. I get through a whole Monday of patients now without stopping to clear it. I wrote 3,812 of those prescriptions, and I'm telling you that you've been right the whole time. Something is stuck back there. Just not for the reason you've been told. Ruth Ellery was my patient for 8 years. She was 56 when she came in, and she'd sung the Easter solo at her church for 20 years. A lump that wouldn't move, she said, and within minutes of clearing it, it was back. I scoped her, saw the pale film on her wall, and wrote the spray. The swelling came down and her throat looked better on my screen. She kept clearing. "Doc, the spray's working. So why is it back in two minutes?" "Some women just make more mucus, Ruth." So I added a second spray. Her tissue looked calmer than mine ever has. She kept clearing. In year 3 her family doctor put her on an allergy pill. In year 5 another doctor added an acid pill. Nobody called me, because a woman in her 60s on two sprays and two pills isn't unusual. She was dried out and still clearing. The next spring Ruth told me she was waking at 3 in the morning and sitting on the edge of the bed to get it up. I told her to run a humidifier. I didn't write it down. On Easter morning she stood up for the solo, and on the second verse she had to stop and clear it. The organist played the line again. She tried again and couldn't. In front of everyone, she sat back down. She was 63. She hasn't sung since. Last spring her first granddaughter was christened, and Ruth sat in the back pew so nobody would hear the noise, while her sister stood up front and read the blessing Ruth had written herself. The last note I wrote on her before that Easter says: mucosa unremarkable, symptoms well managed. Her throat looked better on my screen for 8 years, and the layer on her wall got bigger every one of those years. Nobody put the two together, and I was one of the people who could have. My colleague gave me until September. "Come back in September. If it's still there, we start the spray." I sat in my car in the clinic lot and didn't start the engine. My daughter's baby was due in July. She'd already asked me to hold her at the christening in August and say the blessing. All I could see was Ruth in the back pew. For two weeks I was sure I'd done this to myself. The coffee. Thirty years of clinic air. You've done the same with your own life. So I did what I know how to do. No dairy, ten glasses of water a day, steam every morning, a saline rinse every night, Mucinex when it got bad. Six weeks, perfectly. Mucinex bought me about an hour. Then she scoped me again. The loose stuff on top was thinner. The layer underneath hadn't moved. I know that routine better than anybody, I did it perfectly, and it moved almost nothing. That same week Marjorie came in for her yearly check. She was 74, a retired paperhanger, and I'd watched a layer on her back wall for six years while she cleared her throat through every visit. I put the scope down expecting to write something stronger. Her wall was pink and clean. "Marjorie, what are you doing differently?" She looked at her hands. "I didn't tell you because I figured you'd laugh at me." Then she told me. I'm not going to write it here yet. If I put it in this sentence you'd stop reading, and I wouldn't blame you, because I almost laughed at her for about four seconds in my own exam room. Then she said the thing I haven't stopped thinking about. "You all work the wet end of it," she said. I asked what she meant. "I hung wallpaper 40 years. You get old paste that's been on a wall since the war, you can run water over it all day. Water don't touch it. You got to put something on it that eats the paste. Then the whole sheet lets go." That's when it clicked. Everything I've ever told a patient to do works on the wet end. Mucinex thins what's already loose. Rinses wash over the top. The spray shrinks and quiets the swollen tissue around the layer, which is exactly why Ruth's throat looked so good on my screen. Not one of them touches the layer itself. What's on your wall is old mucus that has bonded to an irritated lining and set, held together by protein. We call it mucus cement. The lining under it stays irritated, so it keeps pumping out fresh mucus as an alarm. That fresh, loose mucus is what you clear at the sink every morning. It's why it's back within minutes. You've been clearing the alarm, not the cement. Then I realized the part that scared me. The cement doesn't sit still. Every night it's there the lining under it stays raw, and every year more sets on top. I have scoped women at 58 with a film in one corner and the same women at 68 with the whole wall covered. In 18 years I have never once seen it go the other way on its own. Your throat tells you something's stuck. The lining under the cement doesn't tell you anything. It just takes it, year after year, while every report says unremarkable. Marjorie was watching me. "You alright, doc?" "No," I said. What Marjorie did was what her mother did on the farm. Raw pineapple core every morning, and mullein from the ditch by the road. The core of a pineapple is where bromelain lives, an enzyme that cuts protein. The cement is held together by protein. Bromelain breaks the bond. Mullein loosens what's been freed so your body can finally clear it. And quercetin, which I'd read about for years and never once connected to this, calms the lining so it stops laying down new cement. Something that eats the paste. A paperhanger figured it out before I did. But bromelain dies in heat. Brew mullein into a hot tea and there's no enzyme in the cup. A dried leaf capsule never had one to begin with. That night I went through my own cupboard. A box of mullein tea a patient gave me, and a bottle of mullein capsules. I turned them both around. No enzyme on either one. I wrote to both companies. One never answered. The other said its blend was "proprietary." If you've got mullein at home, turn it around and look. It won't be there. I wasn't going to chew pineapple core at my counter for the rest of my life. So I went looking for a real dose of mullein, 1,000 mg, with the enzyme in it instead of brewed out of it, quercetin for the lining, and something I'd actually take. It took me three nights. In 18 years I've never said a brand name to a patient, and I went back and forth about writing one here. It's called Vitanics Mullein Gummies. Two pear gummies a day. For the first few days nothing happened. I stood at my bathroom sink one morning thinking I was a 61 year old ENT taking advice from a paperhanger. Around day 4 the morning glob felt different. It came up instead of sitting there. Around day 9 I coughed up dark, dense chunks I'd never seen in four years. It scared me for about an hour. Then I understood. It's the clearance phase, the old cement letting go. At day 60 I asked my colleague to scope me early. She went quiet for a long time. Then she turned the screen around. Where half my wall had been coated in April, there was a sliver in one corner. "It moved," she said. "It's never moved," I said. "Not once in four years." I still see her. I'm not telling you to skip anything your own doctor gives you. I'm telling you what I saw on that screen. In August I held my granddaughter at the front of the church and said the blessing all the way through. I didn't clear my throat once. Two weeks ago my husband said, "You stopped clearing your throat before you talk. You've done that for four years." I didn't even know I'd been doing it. September came and went, and nobody's handing me a spray. It was never the coffee, or the clinic air, or whatever you've been going over at 3 in the morning. The cement was setting on your wall before the first time you cleared it. Nobody looked, and that was my job, not yours. Ruth thought she was managed too. Her spray was working, and she was 63 when she sat down in the middle of her own solo. Her sister pays for it every Sunday she stands where Ruth used to. Her granddaughter will grow up with a grandmother who sits in the back. The one I take every morning is Vitanics. Ruth told me she was sitting on the edge of the bed at 3 in the morning to get it up. I told her to run a humidifier, I didn't write it down, and that Easter she couldn't finish her solo. Don't wait for somebody to ask you. ENT. 18 years in practice. Vermont. The specialist I trust on this explains the mucus cement, and why Mucinex physically can't reach it, better than I can here. It's the page I send my own patients to now: https://tryvitanics.com/pages/adv2mucus P.S. Next time you clear it, count how long until it's back. If it's minutes, ask your doctor to turn the screen around and show you the back wall of your throat. It costs nothing. P.P.S. I get nothing from this company. I asked Throat & Sinus Insights to share this because I can't put my name on it. On Friday a 64 year old woman sat in my chair with glue on her wall and asked if a mullein gummy her daughter found online was nonsense. Six months ago I'd have said yes. Send this to whoever in your family clears her throat before every sentence, especially the one who says her spray is working.