Stye Prevention and At-Home Treatment
What do you do if you have a stye? On last week's blog, we talked about what a stye is, and why they were so much more common during our time of self-quarantine during the COVID-19 shutdown. Eye doctors across the country commented on multiple panels and blogs that that is the infection that they noticed the most from patients during self-quarantine. If you missed that blog don't worry, you can go back here to review what a stye is.
Now, if you have a stye, what can you do to treat it? There are a number of things you can try at home to get it to heal before going to your doctor's office. Here is a list of the best practices:
KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF
Avoid touching your face or eyes as much as possible. Avoid touching the stye itself. In the long run, you will just irritate it more. If you do need to touch your eye or face, make sure your hands are clean. Getting dirt or debris in the glands of the eyelid is how this stye started in the first place.
Don't try pop to it. It's not going to be good if you pop it. You could spread the infection, make the infection worse, make the infection deeper into the eyelid, and so on.
When you have a stye, make sure you're keeping your face and your eyelids clean. Try not to wear any makeup. And if your eyeliner, liquid eyeliner, or mascara tube is more than three months old, please throw it out. All makeup is disposable and mascara has a shelf life of three months. You're putting it on your lashes every day. It's picking up bacteria and you're putting it back into a warm dark tube where it can grow and flourish. And so in three months' time, your mascara tube is filled with bacteria. Go ahead and throw that tube of mascara out and wait another week before you start using your mascara again.
HOW TO TREAT IT
1) Warm Compresses
The best warm compress to use is called a Bruder Mask. If you don't have one of these handy, you could use a wet washcloth, but it just doesn't hold heat as well. Put the moist heat compress in the microwave for 20 to 30 seconds. Then, lay it over your eyes for as long as it'll stay warm, which is usually 8 to 12 minutes. Make sure you do the baby bottle test on the back of your wrist to ensure it's not too hot before you place it over your delicate eyelids. Try to do these warm compresses as many times a day as you can stand it.
2) REMOVE YOUR EYE MAKEUP
You want to do the warm compresses when you don't have any mascara on. Beforehand, use We Love Eyes makeup remover. This happens to be one of my favorites. I have dry skin so the oil-based makeup remover is my friend. Afterward, I also use a makeup remover cloth. You just run it under cold water and scrub the makeup away with a tightly woven microfiber cloth.
If you don't have a favorite eye makeup remover, please get my makeup remover guide. The guide describes all of the makeup removers that you can use when you have sensitive eyes. You can get that on my website at www.pamtheriot.com/makeupremover.
3) CLEAN YOUR LIDS
Follow the makeup removal step with a lid scrub. We Love Eyes tea tree foaming lid and lash scrub is one of my favorites. It comes out as a foam. Just pump a gumball sized drop onto your finger. Rub your two index fingers together. Then, scrub, scrub, scrub, the foam right into your lids and lashes using your index fingers. Allow the foam to sit on your lids for about 30 seconds before washing it off.
4) REPEAT
So, that's what you do if you have a stye. Keep doing the lid scrub and the warm compresses again and again and again, as many times a day as you can stand.
The warm compresses will get the stye to open up. White gooey stuff will come out of it. This is what you want to happen. The goo is your body's immune response to the infection. You want that to come out of the lid, so the swelling will go down. If you don't get it out, then you're going to end up at the eye doctor's office for treatment.
HOW TO PREVENT A STYE
What can you do to prevent a stye? So you've had a stye before, there are a few simple steps you can take to prevent them from happening again.
1) REMOVE YOUR EYE MAKEUP EVERY NIGHT
Remove your eye makeup daily. This is my "Golden Rule" of makeup wear. If you are going to wear makeup, you have to commit to taking it off before bed. My favorite remover is We Love Eyes eye makeup remover oil followed by a makeup remover cloth.
Download the makeup remover guide, and follow along to find the one that works best for your lifestyle and skin type. Especially if you have sensitive eyes, you'll find the right makeup remover for you.
#2) Throw your makeup out on time
Mascara and liquid eyeliner have a shelf life of three months. Write it in your calendar or set a reminder on your phone, but you must throw out your mascara and liquid eyeliner tubes regularly. The average woman wears mascara daily. It is America's favorite cosmetic, the one we can't live without.
#3) Lids Scrubs
Do your eyelid scrubs daily. You can use a tea tree oil-based cleaners if you're prone to styes, have red lids, or find that the base of your eyelids is itchy. The tea tree oil-based scrub is stronger, but may not be a good option for long term use.
OCuSOFT HypoChlor is more gentle on the skin and safe to use long term. To use it, make sure your face is clean and your eyelids are free of makeup. Then, spray it directly onto your lids and lashes with your eyes closed.
It comes out as a spray, and then you just rub over your lids and lashes. Allow it to air-dry on your eyes without washing it off. Whereas with the foaming scrub, you do have to remove it with water afterward.
#4) Warm Compress
And then daily, use a warm compress. As I said earlier, the one I recommend to my patients is a Bruder Mask because it holds heat best. The warm compress feels great to your eyes. You can do it as the last thing you do before you go to bed. Allow the compress to stay in place for 8 - 12 minutes.
WHAT IF THE STYE DOESN'T GET BETTER
What if you have a stye and it doesn't get better? You've tried these at-home treatments. If it has either getting worse or it's not better after a week, you do need to call your eye doctor for an appointment.
The eye doctor may try oral antibiotics or some antibiotic ointment to rub on the stye itself. If that doesn't resolve the stye completely, then the eye doctor can move on to surgical treatment. There are two methods here: inject the stye with a steroid, or surgically remove the stye. To remove the infection, a small incision is made on the inside of the eyelid. And, the infected material is removed.
It is best to try to do as much at home treatment as possible before moving on to a surgical procedure. Even with the surgical options, the stye does not resolve overnight. It takes a few days for the swelling to completely resolve.
CONCLUSION
Unfortunately, there is no quick fix for styes. The best thing to do is to prevent them in the first place. If a stye comes up, it is going to be a few days, to weeks before it completely resolves. Get a daily regimen in place to keep your lids and lashes clean and the oil glands in your lids functioning properly.
You can download a daily eye treatment regimen to follow which will keep you from getting the pesky styes as well as keep your eyes and eyelids healthy. Download the handout here.
And, if you would like to find the best eye makeup remover to fit your sensitive eyes, check out this guide. Beyond removing your eye makeup daily, there are some best practices to keeping your eyes healthy while looking great in makeup. If you don't know all the rules about how to keep your eye makeup clean and where to put it on your eyes, I would love to share the best tips and tricks with you. I have a course called the CLEAN Makeup Manual, and you can find out all about it here.
