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The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Women: Sties and Chalazia

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Sties and Chalazia

Sties and Chalazia

Help for Pimples on Your Eyelids

Next to a big zit on your nose, sties and chalazia (pimples on your eyelid) are among the most distressing of blemishes. Like pimples on your face, they show up at the most inconvenient times. Making matters worse, they tend to hurt.

Sties form when an eyelash follicle gets infected, perhaps because you used a contaminated mascara brush or because dandrufflike scales have clogged the follicle. You'll see a red, painful swelling like a little boil on the edge of your eyelid around the base of your eyelash, with a white head of pus on the swelling.

Chalazia form inside your eyelids when one or more oil glands get clogged, perhaps from makeup residue. Though often painless, chalazia can cause your eyelid to swell, itch and ache.

Each eyelid contains anywhere from 20 to 30 oil glands, and you can develop more than one chalazion at a time. Same for sties.

CLEAR UP THE BUMPS

Home treatment for both sties and chalazia is the same.

Drain with warm compresses. At the first sign of a sty or chalazion, place a warm, damp washcloth over your closed eyes for at least five min utes at a time, four times a day for two weeks, says Monica L. Monica, M.D., Ph.D., an ophthalmologist in New Orleans and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology. This will help the sty break open, or the chalazion to become absorbed, Dr. Monica says.

When To See A Doctor

A stubborn sty or chalazion calls for medical attention--you may actually have a cyst or other problem that should be taken care of. Same goes for recurrent sties, which sometimes signal diabetes.

More often than not, though, a sty is just a sty, and it can be drained. A chalazion can be removed. See a doctor if a sty or chalazion:

* Doesn't get better--or gets worse--after two days.

* Grows very quickly, despite compresses.

* Bleeds.

To keep the washcloth warm, wrap it around a hot baked potato or boiled egg. The washcloth will retain heat longer, says Monica Dweck, M.D., an ophthalmologist in Allentown, Pennsylvania, who specializes in eyelid problems.

Hands off. As with a pimple on your face, if you try to pop a sty, it may rupture beneath the surface, further aggravating matters, says Dr. Dweck.

Take a vacation from eye makeup. Let your eye heal (and your clogged oil glands clear) before you apply any eye makeup again. That means mascara, eyeliner or shadow. Otherwise, you may end up with several sties and chalazia instead of just one, says Dr. Dweck.

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