Say Goodbye to That Stye

January 14, 2015

 

When I woke up with a stye last week, I dropped my mascara tube in the trash, put away my contacts and went to work on the little bacterial infection, naturally. This is what Web MD has to say about treating a stye or chalazia which can be a bacterial infection and/or blockage. Home treatment is all that is needed for most styes and chalazion.

 

• Apply warm, wet compresses for 5 to 10 minutes, 3 to 6 times a day. This usually helps the area heal faster. It may also help open a blocked pore so that it can drain and start to heal.
• Use an over-the-counter treatment. 
• Let the stye or chalazia open on its own. Don't squeeze or open it.
• Don't wear eye makeup or contact lenses until the area has healed.

If a stye is not getting better with home treatment, talk to your doctor. You may need a prescription for antibiotic eye ointment or eyedrops.  If a stye or chalazia gets very large, the doctor may need to pierce (lance) it so it can drain and heal. Do not try to lance it yourself. Good news!  You can make your own antibiotic eye ointment in fact, you might have a jar of it kicking around if you've been hanging out at Camp Wander for any length of time.

This is all you need, the extremely versatile work horse of a salve, CW All Purpose Healing Salve along with a stack of clean wash cloths for warm compresses.  No makeup or contacts in the meantime, ok? Ok! If you're ready to make your own All Purpose Healing Salve you can find my "how to" in this blog post. The reason I chose this salve to treat this stye is for the strong antibacterial properties from the Lavender, Melaleuca and Lemon blended and well diluted with organic, unrefined virgin coconut oil with powerful antibacterial properties of its own.  Coconut oil also contains lauric acid, lauric acid is a powerful virus and gram-negative bacteria destroyer, it also contains the most lauric acid of any substance on Earth and, it's found in breast milk, can't be all bad huh?  Just be sure you're buying the very best, your salves are only as healing as the ingredients you use! Here's my easy, so easy protocol.  The only hard part was tossing my mascara and going without eye makeup for a few days, ugh.  Ready for it?

Wash your face at night, rub a small amount of CW All Purpose Healing Salve on the offending bump whether it's a stye or a chalazia.  Let it sit for a minute or two, it might sting a little bit depending on how raw eyelid is but it subsides quickly next, apply a warm, wrung out wash cloth to your eyelid and hold until the wash cloth turns cool. Repeat the warmth if you have time.  Reapply salve right before you hit the hay and let it work it's gentle magic all night long.  Do this for several days until you see improvement, be consistent...you know how important that is.  Should matters get worse, contact your vision health provider. Alright, I realize this is the real world and going without makeup might be horrifying for many of you, truth be told, it's very disturbing for me too. If this is the case, add a drop or two of pure Lavender to your mascara tube to kill the bacteria if any is lurking there. I chose to toss my tube of mascara at the first sign of a stye because I had been using new sample from my daughter and I forgot to add Lavender to it, doh! "The moist, dark environment inside the tube is an ideal place for nasty bacteria to proliferate—especially after the three-month mark, when mascara expires. No big shock, 86 percent of women in the study admitted to using past-its-prime mascara."  Women's Health

 

 

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