If you have a painful red bump on your eyelid, then the stye the limit! A stye occurs when the oil glands around the eyelid get infected and inflamed.

Natural remedies
Place a handful of fresh parsley in a soup bowl. Pour a cup of boiling water over the parsley and let it steep for 10 minutes. Soak a clean washcloth in the hot parsley water, lie down, put the cloth on your closed lids and relax for 15 minutes. Repeat the procedure before bedtime. Parsley water is also good for eliminating puffiness around the eyes.

Drink dandelion tea to rid the body of bacteria that can lead to sties. Moisten a regular (nonherbal) tea bag, put it on the closed eye with the stye, bandage it in place and leave the bandage on overnight. Hopefully, by morning it will be "bye-bye stye." Wet a tea bag. Place over your eye for 10 to 15 min. The tea will draw the sty. You can use any type of tea bag. Boil a handful of acacia leaves in two cups of water to make a decoction and apply it as compress on the eyelids

Go for the Gold
Rub the eye stye three times with a gold wedding ring. When we started compiling information for this book, we decided not to use any silly-sounding, superstition-based remedies. This remedy for stye, however, comes from so many reputable sources that it must have some credibility. Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for research purposes, neither of us has had a stye since we began working on this web site, so we haven't been able to test the wedding-ring remedy ourselves.

Banish Stye with Bancha
Roasted-bancha leaves are used to make a popular Japanese tea-these tea bags are available at most health food stores. Steep a tea bag in hot water for 10 minutes and add 1 teaspoon of sea salt (also available at health food stores as well as supermarkets). Saturate a cotton pad in the lukewarm liquid and apply it to your closed eye, keeping it there for 10 minutes at a time, three times a day. In addition to-or instead of-the roasted- blancha tea bag remedy, dab on some castor oil several times throughout the day until the sty disappears.