Catching a cold is an experience that may happen in daily basis. Hence, if the cold lasts for a while without any signs of getting better, you might experience sinusitis, instead of merely a cold. There are in fact some signs of sinus infection—sinusitis which can be visible. Some people with sinus infection have a complaint about the occurrence of sore throat during this infection. Although sore throat is not the only sign sinus infection has, a sore throat which lasts for a quite long period should be paid attention to.

Sinus and postnasal mucus

Postnasal drips has a close relation with sinus glands in the end of your nasal passage. These glands, with the nose, produce mucus continuously. This mucus is essential for bodily activities, such as bacteria clearing and allergies prevention. In normal condition, these mucus should not cause any harms to the throat and nose passage, as we swallow it directly without even noticing. However, there are certain conditions which may trigger the mucus to be troublesome. Those are congestion, cold, and allergies. These three health interruption causes mucus production to elevates and hence, more amount of it is produced. When the glands are infested with bacteria, these produced mucus gets thicken, which leads to mucus build up in the end of our nasal passage.

Postnasal drips and sore throat

Postnasal drips which are produced by an infected sinus gland will drain down the back of your throat, causing build up on the site. Whereas the considerable amount of produced mucus should not be a problem for most people, postnasal drips give a quite significant effects. When we are experiencing postnasal drips—and its build up on the throat, our body sends us the message through some signs, such as:

• Coughing—this is the body’s natural way on attempting in getting the postnasal drips out of the throat passage.
• Problems of swallowing—this is caused by mucus blockage on the back of the throat, which unintentionally closes the food passage, causing discomfort when swallowing and the difficulty of doing this activity itself.
• Sore throat—which might be felt as a small tickling sensation initially, but develops into something more serious if left untreated. With sinus infection, a sore throat usually produces bad colored, thick discharge.

When suffering from sinus infection, patients might experience different kinds of symptoms and signs. Hence, not all sinus infection patients experience sore throat. In fact, the symptoms developed with sinus and allergy reactions are quite similar. One of these similarities is sore throat, which may also occur because of some allergens.

How to know a sore-throat is sinus-induced?

An inflammation of the sinus in our nasal passage may lead to sore throat, which is similar to the reaction of various kinds of allergies. Despite this, there are some methods to differentiate these two sore-throat-inducing factors, and those are:

• The length of suffering period

A sore throat induced by sinus usually takes a longer period than the one caused by allergies. You might be able to get rid of allergy-induced sore throat without any medications, instead only by keeping yourself away from potential allergens, such as pollens, dust mites, and certain foods.

• Sore throat symptoms

Generally, a sore throat caused by sinus starts very lightly, only as a tickling sensation down the throat. This might intensify or subside within days. On the contrary, allergy-induced sore throat will gets severe as soon as the body reacts to nearby or consumed allergens.

• Side effects

A sore throat from light allergies is usually fast to recover and is not accompanied by some severe side effects, such as elevating fever, bad-colored nasal discharge, and swelling facial pain. An allergy-induced sore throat usually causes clear, runny discharge, which will stop as soon as the allergy source is taken away. Quite differently, sinus-induced sore throat is caused by an infection to the sinus gland, which might be caused by bacteria. Thus, the resulted discharge is usually pus-like, with yellowish or greenish color and is accompanied by swelling nose or facial areas. If someone suffers from a chronic sinus infection, bleeding might be visible with the discharge produced during this sore throat.