Transcription
This video is for people with styes that don't necessarily want to take the steroid injection or have it lanced or don't want to go on an antibiotic. I'm going to give you another solution, which I think is pretty scientific. And when we're talking about science, we're talking about the best theory. And there's not a lot of data on this stye, but I did find some really interesting information that will lead us to, uh, I think the best alternative solution.
What is a stye? Well, it's just a little pimple on your eyelid, usually involving a sebaceous gland. Sebaceous glands are the oil glands. So apparently, this gland is plugged up, it's not draining, and it involves an infection. It's inflamed, it's irritating, and many times people just let it go, and within seven days, it goes away. But what about these styes that keep coming back over and over and over? What's really behind this problem, and how can we get rid of it once and for all?
So, we want to ask some really important questions. What blocks a sebaceous gland? Why is this bacteria involved, usually the staph bacteria, in this location of your eyelid and not other places? And I know there's not a lot of information about this topic, but what do we know about the sebaceous gland? What do we know about cysts? What do we know about this staph infection?
One of the things that we know is that diabetics have a much higher incidence of styes. They also have a much higher incidence of staph infections, as well as cystic acne, which is similar to this stye problem, but on the face, not on the eyelid. It's also interesting that there's a much higher incidence of boils and cysts with diabetics as well.
So, this is what I found. Sometimes the treatments involved what's called retinoids. It's a type of vitamin A. And we do know there's this synthetic vitamin A medication used for cystic acne called Accutane, but that has some major side effects. But anyway, there's some interesting information on the relationship between vitamin A and styes.
But if we look at one very interesting thing that can occur with a vitamin A deficiency is that you can get this hyperkeratosis. That's a condition where you're getting this roughened extra layer of skin tissue in a certain area of the body, inside the ducts, which are little tubes of the sebaceous gland or the oil gland. So that right there tells us that a vitamin A deficiency can clog up this oil gland, and the sebum or the oil can then build up and cause pressure and inflammation.
So, one big purpose of vitamin A is it controls the epithelial layer. That's the outer portion of your skin, both external and internal, like even in your sinuses, underneath your eyelid, or even in your digestive tract. So vitamin A controls that, and if we're lacking that control, we don't necessarily get the normal cells. We can get some abnormal cells as well. And I did find a study on humans, and I'll put all this down below, that showed a significant vitamin A deficiency in those who had a stye versus those who did not.
And just as a side note, there are over 140 million children with a vitamin A deficiency worldwide. So it's a common deficiency. In fact, for children, it's the second greatest deficiency behind protein. So iron and zinc are big deficiencies, but vitamin A is also a very common deficiency. If someone has a vitamin A deficiency, it can alter the mucous membranes of their eye, as well as the cornea, and in some cases, also cause dry eye. Vitamin A is also intimately involved in the immune system. So when someone's deficient in vitamin A, they can be a lot more susceptible to getting an infection.
Now, let's shift gears to this staph infection. Okay, the staph bacteria, apparently, and I mentioned this before, diabetics have a much greater risk of having staph infections than non-diabetics. In one study, uh, with uncontrolled blood sugars, it was found that there is a much greater impaired immune reaction with the neutrophils. That's like the frontline, uh, defense cell, in their fighting ability with something called superoxide. That's kind of like the weaponry that they use to kill pathogens. And they found this, which I think is very interesting, when they injected insulin and restored the blood sugars to normal, the neutrophils and that superoxide went back to normal.
Now, what does that mean in layman's terms? It means that if you have high blood sugars, your immune system is impaired. You also have something called insulin resistance, which means inside the cells, you actually have a deficiency of insulin. Yet, in the blood, you might have a lot of insulin. But the insulin resistance comes from having a diet that's very high in carbs and sugar. And so people with insulin resistance, really deep down, the side, have an insulin deficiency. And so when you give the person more insulin, all of a sudden their immune system does better, and other things improve too. But that's not the way to really ultimately fix diabetes, because diabetes is really a disease of high sugar. So what you want to do is you want to get the sugar out of the diet. You want to go on a low-carb diet for sure.
So we have the vitamin A connection. We have this staph connected to diabetes and blood sugar connection. And then we have vitamin D. So there's another association with vitamin D deficiency with just about every single eye problem you can think of, involving glaucoma and cataracts and overall inflammation and more susceptibility to not just infections, but having styes.
And then we get to this other new nutrient called zinc. Now, zinc is important in reducing the incidence of getting a stye. So it might not help on the front end, but it can actually build up your immune system to reduce the recurrence of styes.
So, before I kind of summarize the best solution, um, the question is, why would someone be deficient in vitamin A? Isn't that easy to get? I mean, it's in salad, it's in kale, it's in spinach, right? Not very much of the retinol. Okay, that's the active form. There's a lot of beta-carotene, but beta-carotene is not the active form of vitamin A. It is the precursor. And so you'd have to consume a tremendous amount of kale to get barely any retinol, which is the active form of vitamin A at all. So it could be that you're just not consuming enough of the right foods that have the active form of vitamin A. That's number one. Number two, you might have some gut inflammation, uh, that can block the absorption of vitamin A, or a liver issue, or a gallbladder issue. Maybe you don't have a gallbladder, or maybe you just don't have enough bile to absorb this vitamin A from the food that you're eating.
Now, vitamin A, the active form of vitamin A, retinol, is very high in beef liver, which not a lot of people consume that. But it's also high in eggs, okay, egg yolks. And there's also some vitamin A in fish as well. But out of all the fish or fish oil, the cod liver oil has the most vitamin A. And cod liver oil has vitamin D. Other things that can deplete you of vitamin A would be a zinc deficiency, which is interesting that that's connected. Also, alcohol can do it, and even being on antibiotics.
So, in summary, what should you be doing? Number one, you should be changing your diet, coming off the sugars, going on the healthy version of the ketogenic diet, which I will put a link right down below. Also, in another study I found with mice, when they fed these mice a lot of sugar, the amount of staph bacteria went up considerably. So realize when you eat sugar, you're kind of paralyzing your immune system. And also, when you eat sugar, if you're female, you're increasing your androgens. Okay, there's a condition called PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, that comes from too much androgen, but that's really coming from too much insulin because their diet is too high in carbs. And too much androgen increases something called sebum, which is the oil in the sebaceous gland or the oil gland, which is the exact thing we're trying to regulate and improve.
And so the big takeaway is that too much sugar kind of paralyzes the, uh, immune system and allows these pathogenic bacteria to grow all over the place in places where you probably have more weaknesses than others, like where you have a vitamin A deficiency in the sebaceous gland. So that could explain why you have that problem in that location. It's kind of the perfect storm. We have a blood sugar problem with a vitamin A deficiency, with maybe a zinc deficiency, with a vitamin D deficiency. But if you take cod liver oil, you pretty much handled your vitamin A and your vitamin D. And if you take some zinc, that just might also, um, help you, uh, keep it from coming back. And I would probably take 200 milligrams for just one week, okay? And then you can come down considerably, just to really fulfill any type of deficiencies that you have.
And one last thing that can help speed things up very fast is to take a clove of garlic. Do not get this in your eye, okay, because it will burn. On top of your eyelid, wherever that stye is, and you just gently rub it in there a few times a day. And that has something called allicin, which is a very powerful antibacterial effect. And you can even take the tea bag from green tea. Okay, so you drink the, the green tea, take the tea bag, let it cool down a little bit, maybe it's a little bit warm, and have that on your eyelid where the stye is as well. And that can greatly help. But the thing to start with right off the bat is to get on this low-carb diet. And for more information on that, you should watch this video right here.