warm compresses are amazing at treating meibomian gland dysfunction for dry
eyes blepharitis or even styes at the same time the heat can cause inflammation on the
eyelids or may even contribute to a change in your corneal shape so this video is
going to be the ultimate guide at how to do warm compresses safely and effectively let's focus in
hey howdy everybody this is dr neal guymon, Dr. EyeGuy, committed to helping you
with your eyes now for this video make sure you check the description below for any helpful links
as well as links to the different warm compresses i'll show in this video this is also a two-part
series video with a second video being on how to do eyelid massages safely and effectively but for
this video let's focus on warm compresses now the benefits of warm compresses is that it allows you
to treat the meibomian glands of the eyelid you have oil glands that run vertical top and bottom
eyelids and sometimes the oil in those oil glands can get hard and thick and sometimes clog up the
oil glands and may contribute to dry eyes or blepharitis or even styes and the warm compress
treats those oil glands that liquefies the oil so it can get out easier now the challenge here
is you want to provide the right amount of heat to the eyelids to treat the oil glands but also
not go too hot because you might scald or burn the skin of the eyelids or you might also cause
inflammation which would be counterproductive of what you're trying to do now another challenge
of warm compresses is the heat can actually heat the cornea of the eyeball and if you apply heat to
the cornea it becomes a little bit more flexible a little bit more malleable so if you apply pressure
to that heated up cornea it can actually change or warp the structure or the shape of the cornea
and this becomes an extra worry when you start doing eyelid massages if you push and bend on
that cornea you might be contributing to a warpage of that cornea it might contribute
to something called keratoconus which is a corneal condition so let's go over the safe
and effective way to do warm compresses and also what worm compresses i recommend now you want
that perfect constant heat to the eyelids and a lot of people will try that wash cloth method
where you warm it up in warm water put it on the eyelids but it gets cold really fast and it's not
that effective at heating the oil glands of the eyelids it's worth it to invest into a specific
warm compress like this this is the hydrate warm compress that you can pick up at eyelovethesun.com
or amazon again i'll put the links below very good at retaining its heat and providing that
perfect constant temperature to the eyelids and it's really easy to use the first thing you'll do
is put it on a plate and put it in the microwave for about 15 to 20 seconds i found that 15 seconds
works the best for me take it out of the microwave and to test the temperature put it on the inside
of your wrist to make sure it's not too hot it's not going to scold or burn your eyelids now the
eye mask has a strap so you strap it on place it right over your eyelids and let the mask do the
work now some studies have tried to find out what's the magic amount of time to do a warm
compress with the right temperature of worm compress the magic number was six
minutes it took six minutes to change the temperature of the eyelid enough
to treat the oil glands now i try and shoot for 10 minutes some people can even do it longer than
that or even make the masks hotter but you want to be careful here because if you go too long
or too hot it can cause inflammation make your eyelids red and can be counterproductive of what
you're trying to do so you want to try and find the perfect balance for you when you're done
with the worm compresses you can take it off and follow the cleaning instructions that come with
these masks again these masks are great highly recommended another common one is brooder masks
again i'll put the link in the description below another popular form of warm compresses are the
electric heat masks very convenient you just plug in the heat mask set it to a specific temperature
that you want apply it to the eyelids and it will stay that constant temperature the whole time that
you're doing the warm compresses super convenient might be a little trickier to keep clean but
still highly recommended now both of these warm compresses are great and amazing both of them also
put a little bit of pressure onto the eyelids and the cornea and you might notice this when you're
done doing the warm compresses you'll notice that your vision might be a little bit blurry
and this might be for two reasons one because you heated up the oil in the oil glands more oil might
be in the tear film causing the blurry vision and two and the more likely one at least for me
is that it changes the shape of your cornea now you'll notice if you have blurry vision it'll come
back pretty quickly that's because the cornea does snap back to its original shape pretty fast now
the worry about this came from a study that showed people using eggs for warm compresses that heat
from the egg and the hard surface and that bend of the egg was pushing onto the cornea and cause some
changes to their corneal shape and more of the worry comes from doing eyelid massages right
after you do warm compresses now if you just want to be extra safe just to avoid any possibility
of reshaping your cornea there are a few things that you can do with these warm compresses that
i mentioned in the video try not to do them while you're lying down that extra gravity could push on
the eyelid and the cornea a little bit more so try and do the warm compresses while you're sitting up
and if you want to be extra extra safe there's another great warm compress option and that would
be to use kind of a revolutionary style of warm compress by tear restore now what's nice about the
tear restorer mask is that it comes with a heat pack where you activate it by pushing the little
medical disc in there causes a chemical reaction and you get heat from the pack almost immediately
and then you put that inside the mask and what's nice about this is that you can actually keep your
eyes open while you're doing the warm compress treatment so you can keep your eyes open you
can actually blink which is a little bit added benefit to the effectiveness of the treatment
but the big thing is that you're not putting any extra pressure onto your eyelids or your cornea
and so if you wanted to do this and just avoid any pressure or corneal reshaping that's possible this
is the way to go and studies have shown that even with your eyes open it still applies that perfect
constant heat to the eyelids to make it very effective and on top of that if you do want to lie
down while you're doing your warm compresses and you want to avoid other warm compresses that might
push on your cornea then this is the way to go for that as well you can put this on lie down close
your eyes and still get that effective treatment without the extra pressure on your cornea now how
often should you be doing these warm compresses this is also different from person to person
depending on what you're trying to treat now if you're trying to maintain or treat dry eyes you
want to at least do it once a day twice if you can same thing with blepharitis try and do it at
least once a day if you're trying to treat styes you want to try and do it at least three times a
day more if you can and this is where you want to work closely with your eye doctor depending on the
condition that you're treating to know exactly how long or how often you should be doing these
warm compresses now one thing to note that's helpful for a lot of people that are dealing
with blepharitis or rosacea or inflammation is that they'll do the warm compresses and eyelid
massages and then right after they'll do a cold compress to bring down the heat and maybe reduce
the amount of inflammation they might get from the warm compresses now that you know the best way
to do warm compresses safely and effectively it's time to check out part two where you'll learn how
to do eyelid massages safely and effectively I'm Dr. Neal Guymon, Dr. EyeGuy, thanks for watching
stay focused check out part two or one of my other videos and i'll see you in the next video