Blepharitis is an inflammation of the eyelids, usually occurring on both eyes along the edge of the eyelids. It occurs when the tiny oil glands of the inner eyelid become clogged and inflamed causing red, itchy eyelids that look greasy and crusted, which may cause an infection at the base of the eyelids. Doctors don’t know the underlying cause.
Blepharitis can become chronic with symptoms on and off for months or years or acute with sudden symptoms occurring within the past few days.
The modern medical approach to treating it includes the use of warm compresses, repeated cleaning of the eyelids and using antibiotic or steroid eyedrops and ointments. But blepharitis tends to come back even with these treatments.
Let’s take a deeper look at the underlying problems causing this so we can address them at the root level which will ultimately prevent this problem from becoming chronic.
According to Ayurveda, the eyes are considered an agneya organ. Agneya organs are organs which inherently contain some heat, or pitta, as it is known in Ayurveda. The digestive organs also contain heat because they have to cook or transform the food when it comes into the body.
But the eyes also cook and transform what we see into information and experience. Thus, the eyes are considered a pitta organ. And pitta is the element of fire and water.
Pitta is called a dosha and is one of three doshas which govern our body: Vata, Pitta and Kapha. Each one of these doshas has five subdoshas which control very specific parts of the physiology. The subdosha of pitta which includes the eyes is known as Alochaka Pitta.
Alochaka pitta works together with all the other four pitta subdoshas: pachaka pitta in the stomach, ranjaka pitta in the liver, sadhaka pitta in the heart and bhrajaka pitta in the skin. Alochaka shares a special relationship though with ranjaka and sadhaka. Which means that if either or both of these goes out of balance there is a greater likelihood that the alochaka will go out of balance as well.
So this tells us a lot of things then. First is that the eyes are a hot pitta organ, which means that throughout our lives we have to learn how to keep this heat down or else inflammation may occur. Next we need to understand that since there is a direct connection of the eyes with the emotional heart and the liver, care must be given to keep these in balance as well.
If we become emotionally stressed our whole body might become hot as sadhaka pitta goes high creating too much heat in our bodies and in our blood, which could have a direct effect on our eyes.
The same is true of ranjaka pitta. If the liver overheats then the eyes will become inflamed, hot and red.
Both situations can lead to blepharitis if the pitta doesn’t go back into balance.
In addition, the eyes contain numerous channels through which fluids flow, much like the whole network of macro and micro channels which run all throughout our bodies. There are channels that carry food, lymphatic fluids, sweat, urine and all of our bodily fluids, including the tears of the eyes which are traveling out through very small micro channels in the eyelids.
Throughout our lifetime care must be taken to keep these various channels, or srotas open. There are foods that shrink, clog and inflame the channels which must be avoided or else the fluids can back up and stagnate in the channels causing bacteria to grow.
So now you can understand how blepharitis might develop. While the underlying causes may be slightly different from patient to patient, you must address all these issues otherwise if you just keep putting compresses on your eyes and treating the eyelids with steroids and antibiotics, the blepharitis will tend to keep recurring.
Therefore we must address the high pitta while at the same time keeping the physical channels open. If we don’t know how to control these two factors then the high pitta will create inflammation and if the channels shrink, get clogged or inflamed, then the fluids will back up, become stagnant and invite infection.
In Ayurveda, we balance the pitta through diet and daily routine changes, avoiding foods which can inflame the channels such as sour, pungent, acidic, salty foods. We instead eat organic fruits, vegetables, grains, proteins, good quality oils and ghee, milk, nuts and seeds.
We avoid channel-clogging foods such as tofu, edamame, soy milk, large beans, hummus, nut butters, such as peanut butter and almond butter, heavy red meats, aged hard cheeses, and many others.
And it’s best to avoid the foods which contain nicotine which shrink our channels. These are the nightshade vegetables: eggplant, bell peppers, tomatoes and white potatoes.
Many children are developing blepharitis due to their highly processed diet combined with overuse of pharmaceuticals which are increasing the heat in their liver, the ranjaka pitta, which directly causes these types of inflammatory eye problems and infections. For these cases we use the vibrational versions of herbs which cool the heat in the liver given in drops in water or transdermal creams, both of which are used to prevent the heating of the liver when crude herbal tablets or teas are given.
There are wonderful teas for sadhaka pitta which govern our emotional heart. Rose, fennel, and coriander are especially good, and herbs such as Ashoka, Arjuna, DGL and others. These help to balance out our emotions, in addition to meditation, prayer, our spiritual practices, exercise, yoga, and avoiding negativity as much as we can.
And then of course we use special ointments on the eyes and cooling herbal eye drops. We have special marma treatments for the eyes using specific cooling herbal creams on the eye marma points. Marma points govern the reception and flow of prana in our bodies. We give cooling compresses to the eyes as well.
What we don’t do in Ayurveda is to try to kill the infection in the eyelids because these antibiotics and steroids might initially work, but then they will kill the friendly bacteria that reside in the skin, which will make it easier for infection to regrow in the future, setting the stage for the recurring use of antibiotics.
I hope this information will help you as you seek to identify the root causes in you or your child’s blepharitis, helping you to break the cycle of using only steroid creams and antibiotics to treat this problem, without addressing all the underlying causes.
Thank you