If you’ve never heard of an eye stye before, it’s a fairly common medical condition affecting thousands of people every year. It’s caused by a bacterial infection entering the eyelid, and an eye stye can cause a growth to form under, on or nearby the eyelid – this is usually as a result of the bacterial infection closing up a tear duct and causing the growth.
For the most part, they aren’t harmful – and it takes simple surgery to remove them that most doctors can do right in their office. But if they keep happening as a pattern, then it means that you should start trying to find what’s causing them.
There’s a surprisingly long list of things that can cause an eye stye, and there are many different ways in which a bacterial infection (usually streptococcus) can enter your eyelid.
Here are 8 bizarre eye sty causes to think about.
1. Drug Abuse
The primary cause for an eye stye is bacteria or an infection that somehow manages to make its way into the eye itself – and this is what causes the characteristic growth that’s usually associated with an eye stye. Of course, it’s obvious that there are many ways in which this can happen – it can be as simple as touching something that wasn’t cleaned properly (and might be infected with bacteria) and then touching your eye afterwards, or it can be a little bit more complicated and involve several different factors.
Your body has a natural immunity against a large range of different diseases, though if your immunity is compromised then you will be more likely to pick up general infections. One of the things that can give your immune system a major knock is drug abuse – and if you are a recovering addict or a current one, you should take special care with your health, especially with cross-contamination and exposure to infection.
