6 Signs Your Cold Is Actually a Sinus Infection, Doctors Shares

If your head aches and you can’t stop coughing at night, you might be dealing with more than a run-of-the-mill cold.

It can be difficult to distinguish between a cold and a sinus infection, since they may share symptoms.

But doctors explain that there are some sinus infection symptoms you won’t usually see in a typical cold.

Determining whether you have a cold or a sinus infection is tricky because colds often cause sinus infections. “Colds turn into sinus infections because during a cold, the nasal and sinus lining swells up,” explains Hamid Djalilian, M.D., an otolaryngologist with the University of California, Irvine Health system. “The swelling causes the drainage openings of the sinuses to close up.

The closure of the openings of the sinuses leads to the accumulation of mucus within the sinuses.

Then bacteria from the back of the nose find their way inside the sinuses and grow, leading to a bacterial infection of the sinuses.”Continue Your, Reading. .