Stye Treatment

Contact lens wearers can be prone to eye infections like styes, especially if they are a bit lazy when it comes to cleaning and disinfecting contacts or if they have an active lifestyle in the outdoors where dust and dirt can easily get under the lenses and cause irritation.

Styes are actually harmless, but they do luck pretty ugly and they can be uncomfortable and cause blurred vision. It's a good idea therefore, to know some remedies for stye eye relief.

How to treat a stye

Stye forming on lower eyelid

Here's how to treat a stye like mine (shown in the picture opposite). The treatment made it reduce in just a few days:

• First I took my contact lenses out and wore my glasses for a couple of days; luckily I still had a pair of prescription sunglasses that worked, even though they were 15 years old and looked very dorky!

• The first evening when my eye was really sore and the lump was full of pus, just like a pimple, I used some eye drops made by Navivision for eye irritation. They contain natural ingredients like calendula and soothed the soreness immediately.

• The following day, I placed a cotton wool pad soaked in hot water over my swollen eyelid 4 times during the day and for a longer 15 minute period at night.

• The next morning, I repeated the warm compress stye treatment, by which time the stye was greatly reduced and there was no more pus in the lump.

• I had to put my contacts in for a few hours to do some yoga, then I removed them, used some more eye drops and bathed the eye again with a warm compress. After a few days the stye had disappeared.

Eye Stye Home Remedies

I was quite lucky in that my stye was small and responded well to the warm compress treatment. If, however, you have a large stye and want to try some other forms of stye treatment before resorting to the doctor, here are some tips for eye stye home remedies:

It's important to note that these remedies will not work for everyone, but they are natural, so won't do you any harm:

• Make some chamomile tea and place the teabag over the infected eye. The natural ingredients will help to soothe the eye and this is a good cheap alternative to using eye drops. The tea will help relieve any stress you have over your unsightly lump in the eye too!

• Coriander seeds soaked in boiling water and then strained are reputed to help with stye infections. Just place a few drops of the strained water in your eye every few hours.

• Turmeric is another common Indian spice ingredient with wonderful medicinal properties. I've read that some people advise boiling a couple of teaspoons of turmeric in water, and then strain the granules through a muslin cloth to use the liquid as eye drops. Personally, I'd rather make a curry with it!

Please ignore some of the ridiculous home remedies you find online like using infant urine drops in your eye. This can only add potential infection, not ease the inflammation.

Your Stye Cure Tips

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