so have you ever had a stye on your eyelid? well in this video we're gonna be
covering exactly what a sty is, the best ways to treat a sty, as well as some
extra pro tips thats gonna help a sty heal much faster and prevent them
from returning so let's take a look
hey everyone welcome to dr. ah health I'm dr. Joseph Allen and here on this
channel I get to bring you the best in tips and education all about the eyes
and vision so if you haven't been here before hit that like and subscribe
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about how important the eyes actually are and hey it any point throughout the
video if you check out the show notes down below you'll find some additional
links as well as a detailed description of everything that we covered today
quick disclaimer is that in this video we'll be commenting on a couple of
vision products and I want you to know that none of the brands that make these
products are sponsoring this video I simply like to comment and share on all
the products that I personally use and love and if you click on any of the
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help support this channel and make videos like this possible so thank you
for your support otherwise let's go over styes so what is
a sty well in the medical world we don't even call it a sty we call it a hordeolum
and a hordeolum means an infection of one of the glands of your
eyelid and you can have two different types of hordeolums you can have an
external hordeolums where it's an infection of the gland of zeiss or the
hair follicle or you can have an internal hordeolum where you have an
infection of the meibomian gland and that's the oil gland on the inside of
the eyelid and since it's an infection the sty or a hordeolum is going to be
red kind of swollen and painful and if you do have an external hordeolum or the
true sty then it could even form a white head and look sort of like a pimple but
it's not a pimple and should try not to pop it under any circumstance because if
you try to pop it like a pimple you could end up pushing the puss further
deeper inside of that infection and that could cause the infection to spread it
becoming a preceptal cellulitis or worse so definitely don't do
that so this infection of the eyelid is most commonly caused by the
Staphylococcus species of bacteria and since it's a bacterial infection the
best number one best way to treat this infection is with an antibiotic and so
if you are having a stye and you want to get this done with right now right
away make sure you go see your eye doctor and get treated with an
antibiotic it's largely did that the best antibiotic choice is
an oral antibiotic so taking an oral medication is going to help this recover
much faster. in rare cases a topical antibiotic may be prescribed but that's
usually in cases of the external stye that has already ruptured and some of
the pus is leaking out or it could be because a person has an excess amount of
what's called blepharitis which is the overgrowth of the normal flora bacteria
that live on our eyelids that eat all the dead skin cells and oils and if
someone has an excess amount of that bacteria they may be at higher risk of
either developing more styes or stys in the future so on occasion yeah a topical
antibiotic may help however even though nine times out to ten most of my
patients are coming in I do end up treating them with some form of oral
antibiotic there occasionally is somebody who doesn't want to take
antibiotics and I totally get that right between antimicrobial resistance
or its effects on our gut flora some people just would prefer to go the more
conservative treatment and so I want to go over the best practices in order to
make that work now if you do any research on your own whether it be
online or through a medical textbook you'll find some sort of comment about
doing warm compresses and that's true a warm compress really does work. if you
know how to do it right and so there's three things you need to focus on to do
one compress correctly and that is one focus on heat two is time and three is
frequency number one is heat and you need continuous heat to the eyelid and
that heats gonna help melt the solidified oils of your oil gland as
well as help fluid movement of your immune system to help it fight off that
infection number two is gonna be time and all for this to work you need to
have the heat supplied for at least 10 minutes at a time I personally like to
go a little bit longer closer to 15 maybe 20 minutes however you need at
least 10 minutes and this is where most people tend to fail with doing warm
compresses because they usually try to go the route of using a warm washcloth
which just does not work because if you try to heat up the warm washcloth under
hot water what happens it cools off within a
matter of seconds so you get like four to five seconds and it's cold again and
so you have to take it off and you have to reheat it and when you're doing that
you're breaking rule number one you're not getting continuous heat so you end
up having to heat it up put it back on heat it put it back on yeah it just
doesn't work it's messy stop doing it number three is going to
be frequency you need to be doing a warm compress at least four times a day you
could do it more often if you want to be really aggressive about it but at very
least qid four times a day so now I know you're probably thinking hey Joe if I
can't use a warm washcloth then what should I be using to do compresses well
I think the easiest answer is to consider our reheatable eye masks such
as this one this happens to be the one that I'm using called the Bruder eye
mask you can of course shop around there's other different similar brands
but these ones I like because they did make it really easy to put in the
microwave you heat it up for about 20 seconds and then you can actually put it
on and it holds the heat for at least about 10 minutes or more I get about 20
minutes out of this it does have a little cool strap on the back so if you
want you can just strap it on and you can kind of relax otherwise it is
washable so if it ever gets dirty you can just hand wash it and you can also
be used for people who are having evaporative dry eye disease and if you
haven't checked out my video or I covered its use for dry eye I'll hook
you up with a link down in the video description below as well as in the
YouTube card up above usually the brooder masks come in somewhere around
20 to 30 dollars online but you could of course check out other brands shop
around but I think that for 20 30 bucks it is a really awesome value now my next
pro tip is to clean the eyelids with some sort of lid and lash cleanser
that's gonna decrease the bacterial load on the surface of the eye during an
active infection and it's gonna help prevent development of blepharitis which
again could in turn caused problems with size in the future now there's this
gentle transition in ophthalmology from using detergent soaps to cleanse the
eyelids instead going toward what's called hypochlorous acid hypochlorous
acid is a solution that's safe non-toxic non-irritating that our body
surely produces on its own for its antimicrobial effects now the are some
companies that have figured out a way to kind of bottle and keep this solution
stable the two most stable on the market is Acuicyn as well as Avenova these
two are fantastic they are basically the most pure on the market and the most
stable they last quite a long time however they are prescription only so if
you want to consider getting these products you will have to consult with
your doctor there are two products that are over-the-counter that I'm aware of
the first one here that I'll mention is called Hypochlor that's by the Ocusoft
company it does work pretty excellent and also the Hydrate by EyeLove
this is another hypochlorous acid solution I think both work effectively
to be much the same however the hydrate solution you can find a lot of good
deals a lot of times that have good discounts going on pretty much all the
time now I typically use a solution about
twice a day whether or not I have a stye or not because again it does decrease
all that extra bacterial load from the surface of the eye when you use it you
can choose to either spray it directly onto the lid the closed lid itself and
then wipe with just a piece of tissue paper and wipe away from the eye or you
can put it straight on to a cotton ball which is what I do and then I wipe away
from the center part of my lid to the outside and that actually irritates and
drags all of the extra dead skin cells off of your lashes away from the eye now
I have personally seen really good success eliminating a style within 24
hours on my own with immediate very aggressive conservative therapy however
it is something to remind you that these can last a long time and it could
potentially build into something more serious so I do recommend you go see
your doctor have a discussion make sure you're getting the right diagnosis and
that they'll discuss with you the best forms of treatment whether that's with
an antibiotic or with conservative therapy alright question of the day have
you had any success using any of these tips whether it be the warm compresses
or using eyelid cleansers go ahead and comment in the section below I'd love to
hear what's working for you alright that's today's video hopefully you learn
something new if you have done so already hit that like and
subscribe button down below and check out other cool videos from dr. eye
health up over here as well as another one down over here otherwise again this
is dr. Joseph Allan hear from Doctor eye health bringing you the very best in
tips and education about the eyes and vision keep an eye on it we'll talk to
you soon