Effective Natural Remedies for Chalazion

ACV did not work (made things worse). Switched to castor oil and compresses - this cleared everything in two days.

Cheers, Steve

This was just merely the intro. Evidently I did not drain the stye properly, because it appeared to harden to a small lump under my eye. I'm a pretty aloof person in general, and I'm not one to zone in on micro imperfections on my face as well as others, but one day I noticed that my right lid was a bit..lumpier? Than the left. I realize it's still probably some puss. Fast forward to researching about ACV and coconut oil, I go full force. All I did was burn my lid because I stupidly used pure apple cider vinegar instead of diluted. Okay, I back off and dilute the vinegar. Nothing. Maybe the swelling went down for me, but swelling wasn't my problem as it was a small rice sized lumb is stuck under my damn lid! Nothing would make it budge. It's 2017 and I still have this small lump, but it's barely noticeable.

Enter my left eye. I've been blissfully accustomed to my left eye being the golden child, problem free. I get a stye of February this year. A pretty bad one. At this point I'm not panicking because styes actually go away fairly quickly for me. I even do a bit of ACV treatment with my newfound knowledge of it. (ACV works miraculously for STYES, but in my case, not for chalazions). It's draining, I had to call a few days off work but it's draining. I delight when I see the collection of pure white gunk collect in the corner of my eye (fellow stye/chalazion sufferers, you'll definitely know how great this feels). My eye seems back to normal!!! Except...it's just like my right eye, there's another small lump!! And I'll be damned if it's symmetrical with my right!!

I get depressed over this now and then. I wouldn't call myself a vain person but having eye problems like this is just embarassing, although nobody has ever pointed out they noticed it, except my boyfriend who was unfortunately my right hand man during my terrible stye flame up which everyone could notice (I tactfully stayed indoors).

Okay onto the treatment, sorry I just wanted to share my story with you guys and know that I'm with you totally, I know how frustrating it is to have something that will never go away, and surgery will never be an option for me. But..here's the light at the end of the tunnel. On a whim I bought castor oil. Yeah I've read such things about it helping eye problems, but the good stories seemed few and far between. It seemed the frontrunner of chalazion cures was still ACV, but that just doesn't do anything for me other than smell bad and burn my lid, even diluted. (and yes, I alternate warm compresses and cool ACV every so often, sometimes doing this multiple times a day for a week straight, nothing). But castor oil. I've read many techniques, so I kind of make my own routine to see how that will work. And by god..I think I got something going here. My lump under my left eye seems more "localized", meaning I could definitely isolate it and move it around other than it just being a swollen mass.

Note: I do want to focus on my right eye, but that is just a small piece of rice compared to my left. I apply castor oil, soak a warm paper towel in some epsom salts (that also has been working and encouraging little crusties in my eyes when I wake up in the morning which I take as a good sign) and lay that right on top of the castor oil so it kind of sticks. From what I've learned, when you read "warm compress", it does not have to be piping hot or even "hot as you can stand". Take it from me guys, all it does is burn your eyelid and make it red and even more unsightly. Definitely warm but not to the point of pain, it should feel soothing. I alternate between this and cool treatments of chamomile tea bags for just a few minutes. When I wake up in the morning, it feels a bit smaller and smaller. I know this is going to take a while but thats how long it needs, and folks, they do eventually go away. Some people have had theirs for years when one day it just goes. It's just unfortunate for those of us who have to be in the public and are always a bit weary of our eyes. However, I will never get surgery. There's no guarantee it will be removed, and I've read stories of scarring and sometimes styes/chalazions coming back for vengeance. I'm sure surgery has worked for some and I applaud them, however, I believe homeopathy is the way to go and everyone is different so we all just need to keep experimenting.

For me, castor oil, epsom salts, and chamomile tea all together have been showing some differences. You could even do these treatments before you have to be somewhere. Just remember, do not burn your eyelid because you could make it worse and who knows, you may just be dealing with an inflamed lid instead of something underneath and you wouldn't know it because you're burning it.

Sorry for the long post, just wanted to finally share my struggles. I can't wait for the day where they make a magic pill to cure these things. And yes I've tried staphysagria and it didn't do anything for me.

Hope this helps others:

• One ounce tin
• vaseline - this will cover and drown them
• 4 drops tea tree oil
• 4 drop lavender oil
• Melt Vaseline add essential oils and stir well.
• Pour into container.
• Apply everyday and night.

With the petroleum salve with tea tree and lavender, you only need to swipe your finger and get scant amount for your lashline. You do not need to goop up! If you have applied too much wipe off with a tissue.

Make sure you use different hands, tissues, wipes for each eye you do not want to transfer the little bugs over to another eye.

Sulphur soap is helpful as demodex hate the smell BUT it will dry your face out. You can buy it on Amazon.

Additionally helpful to me was to use Desert Essence Organics Lemon Tea Tree Shampoo - you can take the cap off and add additional tea tree and lavender oil. Wash your hair and face. This shampoo is for oily hair so it can be drying to hair and face.

Wash your bedding in detergent and borax in HOT water. Your pillow case wash as much as humanly possible and use HOT heat.

Buy unscented babywipes for your eyes. Amazon Basics or Costco.

Throw out your eye makeup and do not wear any until condition clears or you will make it worse.

My doctor didn't even know about these things or my ophthalmologist!

There's a good chance my follicles were already clogged by the huge stye my chalazion started out as. The excessive heat didn't help matters. Anyways, I decided to lay off the heat, just applying a compress twice a day, for 10 min at morning and 10 min at night.

I use the eye mask you can put in the microwave—it stays warm and you can easily re-heat. I bought mine from an optometry clinic but you can probably find one on Amazon. Anyways, I reduced compress use to 10 minutes at morning and night, followed by gentle pressure with cu-tip against the chalazion (as well as rolling it down the cyst toward the lash line).

In between doing this, so about 5 times a day, applied Apple cider vinegar with the “mother“ using a cu-tip. Dipped q-tip in vinegar, touched it against Kleenex so it wasn't dripping wet, then rolled q-tip over cyst and massaged gently into cyst, for about a minute. Got as close to the lash line as possible without getting any in my eye.

Chalazion is gradually shrinking (took a few days to notice a difference) and the lash follicles near the chalazion that had been filling with oil are draining as well.

In addition to the vinegar it's probably important to not overdo it with the heat. Too much heat also likely causes some inflammation and swelling which will just keep the silly thing from draining or make it worse. I would suggest at least try going down to warm compress 2-3 times a day, 10 minutes at a time, and use the vinegar.

It is absolutely working for me!!

My son developed a Chalazion on his right eye (upper lid) around 10 months ago. I was very ill and depleted of all energy to function normally at the time and couldn't do much research on how to help him. I was not happy with the options typically used to "heal" these relentless chalazion: surgery, steroids, antibiotics. Once I was feeling much better a few months later I could dive into research what he needed. I found several natural remedies and most of them seemed far fetched to try on my then 3 year old son. Him putting a warm/hot wet cloth on his eye was not gonna happen especially in the recommended 4-6 times a day at 10-20 minutes each time, eye drops, etc.

In my research it seemed that getting a long standing chalazion that had hardened to soften up was the key to getting it to drain and heal was the ticket. I was researching homeopathy options since I have seen it work for so many other things in our family. After countless hours and 5 or 6 months of researching when I had time I narrowed it down to two remedies I was going to try. Silicea 6c and Calc Fluor. 6c, a dose of each (2 globules of each kind in the mouth at the same time). Silicea brings things out of the body so I was hoping it would bring the pus to the surface.The Calc. Flur has been used for long standing, hardened chalazions.

I would give him a dose morning, noon and evening. The chalazion went thru many phases of me wondering if it was getting better/smaller or not. I took photos almost every day but it was hard to compare the shape/size of it with photos taken from different angles/lighting, etc. Plus, he is 3 so getting him to stand still is challenging for a closeup of his eye. So, some days it would look shiny/red/irritated/angry and other days the redness was gone and it looked smaller. Also, the chalazion shape was changing. So, it went from "oh it looks better" to "oh, I'm not sure if it is improving" but kept going anyway.

After about 10 days from starting the remedies it started looking like a pus pocket was forming on the lower left side of the chalazion. I figured this was a good sign especially if at some point we could get it to open up and massage the junk out. The pus area kept getting bigger and now the chalazion had morphed into a rounded point on that left side where the pus pocket was. If we pressed on the chalazion it was no longer hard and it seemed like it wanted to burst and I thought eventually it would but it never did. We just kept going with the remedies. Around or just before 2 weeks after starting the remedies we could definitely tell it was getting smaller. Today marks the evening of the 16th day of using these 2 remedies and we noticed after his bath that the curve of his upper eye lid was no longer deformed, AT ALL. The chalazion had gotten so big before these remedies that it deformed the contour of his upper eye lid. Instead of it being a typical, natural arch it had a big undulating curve in it. You couldn't see his whole eye because of the deformity. BUT no more.

The arch of his eyelid looked completely normal. When he woke up on the 17th day it had shrunk so much while he slept. It was maybe 15% of it's original size. Sidenote: In the mornings I would notice the biggest change in the chalazion....Some days when I would think it looked way better in the morning by evening it would like angry. I guess my advice would be to keep going with the remedies. I will report back in a week or so with the final results.

The silica 6c and the calc fluor 6c by borion you can purchase on amazon.com or probably any online homeopathic shop.

Also, these are the other homeopathic remedies we tried that didn't work:

• Staphisagria
• Plantanus Occ.

We also tried adding flax seed oil to his diet

If my son was older I would have also would have tried the following as well....

-the charcoal/flax meal poltice pouch. using charcoal since it is a drawing agent just makes sense.

-diy eye drops with distilled water and a little manuka honey....the honey burns and I wasn't sure how many weeks I would have to use it and on a 3 year old seemed like a major challenge. I just didn't want to put him thru that. So, we didn't go that route but I would of definitely done it on myself or if he were older. Or even the optimal manuka honey eye drops.

This is very long winded but I am hope that the details will help someone.

Best of luck,

jj

Pay attention to what time of day the problem is worse or gets better. I saw one post where the contributor noted that theirs was worst in the morning. Mine was always better in the morning, and deteriorated after breakfast: of course, since I was usually eating eggs or cereal with milk, and I have learned that both eggs and milk are triggers. The person who wrote that theirs was worst in the morning is probably eating the offending food at dinnertime or later, causing the inflammation to increase overnight.

You will want to do some careful detective work, because you can't assume that a trigger food will give you a chalazion every time: if I eat one egg by itself, I am usually still ok. What happens is that your trigger foods will prompt a chalazion to set in if you either eat the food several days in a row -- or if you are run down or stressed at the time you partake of the food. Or if you eat multiple trigger foods at the same meal. (An egg quiche washed down with white wine would give me one for sure! )

So continue with all the great ACV, castor oil, etc. that are suggested on this blog -- but try to find why you are prone to them in the first place. Food sensitivities can cause a broad array of weird health issues.

Warm regards from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, JulieMarie

He used salt water to rinse his eye, when I first saw this video I was skeptical about doing it but anyway I did it just to see if it would work, well it did worked!!! I rinse my eye with clean previously boiled water that cool down to room temperature and added sea salt to a point that I could rinse with my eye and holding the water (open eye) for 5 seconds or so, I repeated the eye rinse 4 times a day, washing my eye before each rinse with baby shampoo.

Note: (I used one of those measure cups that comes with nightquil or liquid vitamins they have 2 tbspoons maximum capacity so I used that and cleaned it very good before each use and yes I rinse with the eye open, stings just a little but I'm telling you it was like a miracle, as soon as I felt one coming I inmediately did it and it would go in 2 days. Good luck everyone!

The regular salt water eye washes did get rid of all redness and inflammation. The Chalazions being so hard and stubborn after having them for 5 months have taken a lot of patience and determination to get rid but I'm almost there now.

First I washed my eyes 4 times a day with baby shampoo. I got 2 socks and filled them with rice to about the size of a golf ball and tied a knot in them and microwaved for about a minute. I soaked 2 large make up remover pads in Epsom salts and boiled water 50/50. I placed the soaked pads on each eye and then held the heated rice socks on my eyes being careful not to burn eyelids. I did this for half an hour, 4 to 5 times a day. Time consuming but it works! Having the constant heat there shrinks and softens the hard Chalazions. Gently massage after for about a minute each time.

I have been doing this repeatly for about 3 days now and my Chalazions have shrunk to about one fifth in size to what they were and are almost gone. I shall continue to do this until they have totally disappeared. I reckon 2 more days of this treatment should do the trick. I wish Doctors would give this advice to sufferers because this remedy really works, which is why I'm sharing this. I don't wish these awful unsightly things on anyone. Good luck and please just persevere as I have. I promise it really does work.

Either way would probably work. I have used castor oil on the eyelids and right on the eyeball. Right on the eyeball will cause some temporary blurriness though. (So, I just do that at night.)

~Mama to Many~

I do a hot compress twice a day. One in the morning and one at night followed by putting a mixture of 1 cup water to 1 teaspoon of apple cider on my lash line with a qtip. I let that dry then I put some Similasan Stye Eye Relief Drops in my eye (you can buy on amazon or CVS/Walgreens/Walmart). I then let my eye dry from the eye drops and then proceed to put an half and half oil mixture of castor oil and tea tree oil on my lash line (don't get inside of your eye).

Do this every day twice a day and you will see results it may take a long time but my 5 year chalazion is almost gone. I've been doing this remedy for months now and it's slowly going away. Chalazions take a long time to go away especially if you've had them for over a year and it's hardened. So be patient and continue at it!

A few months later, however, another chalazion appeared, this time on the lower lid of my left eye. This one was quite visible, and not in a good way. I tried the warm compresses, etc., but nothing was happening, so I made an appt with an ophthalmologist to get confirmation it was a chalazion and to see what he suggested. He suggested warm compresses using a hard-boiled egg wrapped in a damp facecloth. The egg sort of fits nicely into the eye socket and maybe touches more of the eye or something. I made a follow-up appt for 2 wks later, and went home to start the egg compresses. Meanwhile, the doc was going to get an authorization from my insurance to lance the thing if I had no luck with the egg.

So I did the egg compress quite diligently 3-6 times a day - so diligently that I created a little burn on my face below the chalazion. Sigh. I wasn't seeing much progress, so as my follow-up appt got closer and I knew I'd be getting the thing lanced, I decided as a last resort to try apple cider vinegar on the inside of my eyelid, knowing it would burn (I've gotten ACV in my eye before by mistake), but figuring it wouldn't be any worse than a needle.

So for a few days, before I did the egg compress, I poured a tiny bit of ACV in the bottle cap and dipped a Q-tip in it, then pulled my lower lid away from my eyeball, and dabbed the Q-tip with the ACV on the inside of the lid, then waited for the burning to subside. Then I did it again if I felt brave. I also swiped the Q-tip over the bump as well. Then I'd do the warm egg compress for several minutes, and roll the egg over the chalazion in sort of a massaging motion.

A couple days of that routine, and my left eye started producing yellow gunk, which I assumed was the oil finally being released from the chalazion, and the bump started to shrink. It's not all the way gone yet, but I feel good enough about the progress I'm making that I'm going to cancel my follow-up appt and continue the ACV and egg compresses until the chalazion is completely flat.

I'm hoping the skin over the chalazion will return to it's normal color and texture at some point, because right now it's rather discolored and puffy. (And not in a good way! )

My eye was bothering me back in January and I did not know why. I never pulled my eyelid back to have a look until maybe 3-4 weeks in. That is when I saw it. It was about the size of a lentil at the time and I figured it would just go away on its own. It did not go away. So I started applying warm compresses once in a while but was lazy and did not do it often. Two weeks ago a few days before a trip to the UK it got bigger to about the size of pea and I started to worry. I looked around on the internet and found out what it was called and what caused it. Sadly, I also stumbled upon a youtube video of Chalazion surgery that freaked me out. I started using the warm compresses religiously with no effect.

While in the UK I did more research and happened upon this excellent site. Sadly, I could not find ACV with mother in the small town I was in and so I just used the filtered stuff. I honestly don't think it had much of an effect. I returned back to the states last Sunday and went straight to the health food store to buy ACV with the "mother". I also saw other remedies and my plan was to attack this little bugger from multiple angles

This was my strategy:

I drank 1 TBSP ACV diluted in 6-8 oz water each morning and evening

I heated a 1-1 ratio of ACV in the microwave (45-60 s) or used a hot kettle to mix with AVC. I also either used the hot kettle to heat a rag or wet a rag placed in coffee mug and also heated that in microwave. Just get them hot.

I dipped a cotton round in the mixture, gently closed my eye and rubbed across it 3 or 4 times to “clean it”. Then I dunked another one, placed over my eye and use the rag as a warm compress on top of it. I did this 3-4 times a day with the last one around 8p. I also used a clean cotton round to do the other eye just in case.

Before bed time I open an activated charcoal capsule and mixed with warm water to make a paste. I used a Q-tip to place the mixture on the Chalazion on the OUTSIDE of my eye and left it there for 30 minutes or so. I washed this off with baby shampoo. Hard to get off so be careful not to get in your eye. Then I applied castor oil to the Chalazion on the OUTSIDE of eye using a Q-tip. I put it on fairly thick and left it there to dry out overnight. Lady at drugstore must have thought I had some issues as charcoal and castor oil are often used for gastro problems. Next morning start again.

After just a day or so the swelling on the outside started to go down but I did not notice any change in size of the Chalazion itself

Thursday (only 4 days later) while in the airport working on my laptop my vision in that eye started to get blurry. Went to the mirror in he bathroom and saw white gunk in my eye and could see the Chalazion had a small head on it that was leaking. Gross, yes. But a relief that the method was working. I tried squeezing it softly but did not want to do it too much so I left it alone and throughout the flight I would dab eye occasionally with a clean cotton round (new one each time). Little by little more gunk was coming out.

The Chalazion is not gone yet but it is more than half the size it was and looks flatter than before. I am not giving up on the process as I want to make sure this completely goes away.

My takeaways that I hope helps other in the same boat I was in.

Be persistent and don't miss treatments.

Use as hot a compress and ACV mixture as you can stand. You don't want to burn your skin.

Try multiple remedies.

I was not a fan of putting ACV directly on the Chalazion with a Q-tip but when I wiped my eye or used the compress some ultimately made it in.

I think the ACV with mother is really necessary as I used the filtered version for 5 or 6 days with no effect.

Good luck

In the end, I continued applying the castor oil to the chalazion and to the water line of my upper eyelid. Additionally, the action I believe most helpful, was the gentle pressure and washing of the eyelash area and upper water line (my chalazion was on the upper eyelid). I eventually tapered off the compressed after 1.5 months. I never thought it would go away. It was gone completely within 2.5 - 3 months. I prayed daily, and believed that the probiotic wash which I used to cleanse my upper eyelash area and the water line would heal the chalazion.

The ACV may have helped cleanse my system (I took 2T a day for a week, and the application to the chalazion, and getting it to crust may or may not have been helpful.) To this day, I continue the gentle eyelash and waterline cleansing. Nothing my doctor or opthamalogist prescribed or suggested helped. There are many probiotic washes on the market. Johnson's Baby Shampoo may be a viable option as well.

Best of luck to all of you struggling with this issue. It will go away when you find the solution that works for you. I persisted and researched weekly - with prayer! God bless all of you.

I was also drinking ACV in a glass of water each day, so I do not know if that may have been a factor as well.

I usually don't post things on the internet, however this site saved me from my quite big chalazion on my upper eyelid. I had it for about two months and my husband insisted I get it operated, I made my doctors appointment, and because it was three weeks away I wanted to try some home remedies to avoid the operation. I started with warm compresses, then read posts on this site and included ACV...little in a cup with warm water and on the eyelid with a cotton-ball and made sure just a little got in my eye, but very little, cause it hurts! First nothing, my skin on the eyelid just got burned, and got swollen pretty bed...so I said this doesn't work and stopped the compressing and just put in a few drops of physiological solution every few hours. Two days later I was sleeping and as I woke up, I could hardly open my eye. I rushed into the bathroom and see that my chalazion was finally unblocked...so I continued compressing, ACV and phys. solution...it has not been a full week and it is almost gone completely, and it was really big. So I gladly cancelled my doctors appointment. So I don't know exactly what really made my chalazion disappear, maybe a combination of the three "remedies", but it got better really fast when I started with ACV, and I was not really constant with it, maybe one or two times a day for about ten minutes, I also put some ACV directly on the chalazion with a q-tip.

Don't over do it, because it will burn your skin.

So this is my story and I hope it will help somebody else, but just a warning, when you attack your chalazion stay home, because when it prepares to open up, you look like somebody punched you in the eye...at least me, my eyelid was really swollen and red...so it was a good thing I didn't plan any outings ;)

Good luck!

I'm a 23 year old female suffering from bad hay fever, under a lot of stress recently following 8 months of job hunting and family issues. These past few weeks I have had a very poor diet with a high sugar intake and lots of caffeine. I was rubbing my eyes a lot to relieve the itchiness of the hay fever. Last week, I woke up feeling like my upper eyelid on my left eye had been punched in the night and now bruised: looking in the mirror, the eyelid was swollen to twice the size of the other eye, and was red in colour. The whole eyelid up to the browbone was extremely painful when I touched it, and a definite lump was forming under the eyelid. Also, the eye would only open half way. With a big job interview coming up and my birthday a few days away, my heart sank.

I waited for 4 hours to see the Eye Specialist in the local Eye Clinic, who said I had a chalazion and that they would surgically remove it by incision after 2 weeks, and that I should "put hot water on it" in the meantime (he refused to elaborate). I was prescribed eyedrops containing 1% chloramphenicol and instructed to use once daily for the next fortnight. Looking online, I was very disinclined to have surgery, as I am very squeamish and also, many people reported having further chalazions as little as weeks after the op. Days passed, and the swelling got redder and larger.

I read up about chalazions thoroughly online and especially on Earth Clinic, and decided a lifestyle change was in order. After readings hundreds of testimonials, I decided that apple cider vinegar was the most likely option.

Here was my regimen:

1. I bought a bottle of organic apple cider vinegar, making sure to find one 'with the mother' as this is said to be the most effective sort.

2. I put 2 tsp apple cider vinegar in cup (100ml) of very hot (near boiling) water, and used cotton wool to soak a little up. I then held it against my eye for a good minute or two, before gently moving the pad down away from the nose. I did this 3 times a day that week.

3. Later in the day, I would use green and black tea bags as hot compresses, and these seemed to help the swelling. I did this 3 times a day also.

4. Also, I started drinking 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar in a pint of warm water twice a day.

5. I completely cut out sugar, alcohol and fast food.

This regimen completely CURED my chalazion in the space of 5 days - I woke up on the 3rd day with a small amount of yellow gunk holding my eye shut, but it easily washed away and my eye looked better. Each day for 4 days I would find this gunk in my eyelashes, and would wash it away to reveal my eyelid becoming less and less irritated and red. Success!

Slowly and surely, sticking to the above regimen, my eye got better and I didn't need the horrible surgery. I would say that putting apple cider vinegar on a HOT water covered cotton pad was doubly effective, as it sped up the healing process. I have continued to drink the Apple Cider Vinegar since then, and am a sworn Apple Cider Vinegar fan ever since.