No hot compresses in 1 week

[khmedia]

Hi all,

At one stage I was doing 2-3 hot compresses per day. However, in the past week or 2 I've not done any. Mostly as a result of saying 'if I feel I can get away with not doing them, I won't' as the inflamation with the heat was horrible (eyes very red directly after hot compresses). I've been using the shower as a way to getting the oils to flow. I've not been putting my fingers near my eyes in terms of expressing the oils - I sort of felt that if the shower loosened the oils that the blinking alone may work. The reason I wasn't doing the expression manually is my fear that I could trigger something. One time my eye was finE and after I hot compressed it and massaged it, I got a foreign body in the eye for 2 days. So I am paranoid about touching the eyes now.

For the past week the whites of my eyes have been white - I am happy with this. For a long period of time I was waking up with red eyes.

The itchy eyes have calmed a bit. They were very itchy before I stopped using the hot compress. So this is another area I am happy with.

In terms of drops. I still need them. Eyes very dry at night so apply Systane in the morning (and during night) to get them going. Twice I've applied Hylo-Forte direct before bed (last night was one of them). Eyes today for the first time in about 1 week feel dryer than usual. I'm currently blaming the use of Hylo-Forte before bed on this. It's real hard to know. Perhaps it is coincident. I am now at a point where I am considering that heat, i.e steam, hot compress or hot cotton ear buds given the increased dryness. I may wait and see how it unfolds.

Anyway, I just figured I'd share this with you. I'm not really asking questions but rather sharing my recent story!

Kevin

[eyes78]

I can say that I agree 100% that HOT compresses can be harmful, at least for me. Several months ago an eye Dr. told me to do HOT (he emphasized HOT!!) compresses. So I did. My eyes got horribly worse over the next few days and improved when I stopped the compresses altogether.

But, I've done so much reading on how warmth helps MGD, and I also found actual studies that indicate the temperature of the compresses used - and they are around 40-45 degrees Celsius or 104-113 degrees Fahrenheit. This is warm, NOT hot. I was literally burning my eye tissue, making the inflammation so much worse. It makes me really angry to think that Dr's are telling people to do these compresses without giving them specific instructions.

I actually measure the water temperature with an instant-read thermometer and then dip my washcloth in it. If I use the microwaveable warm compress, I now know, based on what my washcloth compresses feel like, how warm the dry one should feel. (I do both wet cloth compresses and microwave compresses.)

Thank you for sharing. I think it is important that people know that too hot can be bad.

[MGD30]

I asked one of the doctors I was seeing if he thought an eye steamer such as blephasteam or the panasonic one would work better than a compress. He said the wet compress works the best but some people get irritated from them so they'll do the steam goggles instead which doesnt irritate as much. They are pretty expensive though so you might want to try boiling some water for steam for a few weeks first and see if that helps.