How to Clean a Stye with Confidence: a Tutorial on What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do
Home care is the single most important component to relieving and improving the appearance of a stye. When a patient walks into my exam room with a stye – I have 2 questions:
- How can I make this stye go away?
- How can I help this patient prevent future flare ups?
In addition to the medications I've likely prescribed for the stye pain and infection - home care is vital. Medications heal from the inside out. Home care and cleaning helps from the outside in.
The first thing we have to do, is clear out that infected debris. Heat up this roller under warm/hot water to create a rolling compress. Make sure to wrist test the heat level so you do not burn your eyelid skin.
This roller is finger sized and perfect for the size of a stye. The idea is to add heat to soften the stye debris so that it can be rolled out. Kinda like relieving an large, evil zit. Roll up and down in small motions to ease out the debris.
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| Roll up & down in the direction of the eyelid margin anatomy for best results. | Eyelid anatomy runs vertical. So should your hot compresses. |
Often, this needs to be repeated 2-3 times a day as the debris will slowly ooze on it's own time. Sometimes the stye hurts too much to add heat. The roller can also be placed under cold water and used as a cold compress to "calm" down the pain. Here a combination of cool and heat can help calm and also release stye debris.
Styes are buggers. Get one, and they seem to come back over and over again. Investing in a 10x lighted magnification mirror is a good choice. You'll use this mirror to clean the current stye and to clean up the eyelid margins to prevent future flare ups. Use the mirror to inspect the stye area to find the "head." It's usually on the eyelid margin, not the actual eyelid skin where you see the stye.
Here you will want to place 1 drop of Tea Tree Eyelid & Eyelash Cleansing Oil on the Eyelid Margin Scrub Brush. Scrub the head of the stye clean. Remember you are focusing on the eyelid margin where the head is. For some of my patients, I have them do this up to 4 times a day depending on the severity and how much they want to improve.
If the head of the stye is on the upper eyelid margin (and vice versa), it will likely kiss the lower eyelid margin on the blink and infect it. So running the Eyelid Margin Scrub Brush on the opposite eyelid margin will be of preventative benefit. Make sure to scrub the opposite eyelid margin before scrubbing the actual head of the stye to avoid transferring the infection with the scrub brush. Keep the scrub brush very clean after each use by spraying it with Calm Eyelid Cleansing Spray and/or Tea Tree Eyelid & Eyelash Foaming Cleanser (keep reading).
After using Focused Eye Roll and/or Eyelid Margin Scrub Brush, you'll want to wash off all that discharge and debris. Usually the debris contains bacteria, so washing it away is vital to improving. Use Tea Tree Eyelid & Eyelash Foaming Cleanser to do just that. I formulated this foaming cleanser to be pro-biotic as there is much discussion that styes can happen when the microbiome has gone out of balance. This foaming cleanser can also be used to wash the roller and brush to keep them clean.
This step has been tested by my patients. Styes clean up faster when Calm Eyelid Spray is used 4x a day then when it's not used. So don't skip this step. Spray Calm directly on the head of stye 4x a day to wash away the bacteria that helped create the stye in the first place.
The spray will also help the stye from infecting other meibomian glands and can also be used to clean the roller and brush for future use.
Use that 10x lighted magnification mirror to inspect all 4 eyelid margins for debris. This is the kind of debris that can lead to future styes and flare ups.
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| Capped Meibomian Glands can trap bacteria and lead to a stye. | Demodex collarettes can lead to styes if the debris accumulates. |
Remove this eyelid margin debris as soon as you feel or see it. Just 1 drop of Tea Tree Eyelid Cleansing Oil on Eyelid Margin Scrub Brush will do the dirty work for you.
Love + Healthy Eyes,
Dr Tanya Gill, xo