Easy method for resolving pinkeye by harnessing the power of probiotics. No meds needed!
Pinkeye, also called conjunctivitis or madras eye, is an extremely contagious bacterial or viral infection. The illness involves the outermost layer of the eye and the inside surface of the eyelid.
It is a common seasonal condition when pollen counts are high, allergies are running rampant, and immunity for most people is very low from moderate to severe vitamin D deficiency. This problem is compounded from being inside all winter out of the vitamin D producing rays of the sun.
Symptoms of Pinkeye
Symptoms of pinkeye include redness, itching, tearing, swelling, and/or mucous production that can firmly cement the eyelids together while sleeping. I remember getting pinkeye as a child and feeling a bit of panic upon waking in the morning and being unable to open one or both eyes!
If this happens to you or a loved one in your home, a warm, wet washcloth compress gently applied to the infected eye (do not rub) quickly dissolves the mucous allowing the eyes to open.
Conjunctivitis is Extremely Contagious
Pinkeye can spread rapidly through a household, which is why action is needed immediately to stop the infection. Most people will quickly run to the doctor’s office at the first sign of redness and irritation.
A prescription for antibiotic eye drops or ointment is the usual conventional remedy. Relief is mercifully quick once the drops are applied. Before the wonderful sensation of relief can be experienced, however, the inconvenience of booking a doctor’s appointment, waiting to be examined, driving to the pharmacy, and getting the prescription filled must be endured.
Additional hassles involve missing work and/or school for the parent and child. Add to this the expense of the visit and filling the prescription which combined could easily total $50 or even more.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to just fix this simple infection at home with none of the intervening steps?
Simple Home Remedy
You’ll be happy to know that pinkeye is one of the simplest and easiest infections to cure at home with no trip to the doctor required. Even better, what you need to fix the problem may already be sitting in your refrigerator. The remedy I’m speaking of harnesses the power of beneficial bacteria to eliminate the infection.
While doctors prescribe ANTI-biotics to kill the pathogens, PRO-biotics work just as well for a minor infection such as pinkeye by crowding them out.
Harness the Power of Probiotics
What you need to remedy pinkeye is a probiotic-rich, non-acidic liquid. For babies and children, the most effective liquid that fits this description is human breastmilk.Â
If the Mom in your household happens to be breastfeeding, a drop or two of breastmilk expressed into a cup and then applied with a clean eyedropper to the infected eye will rapidly and magically eliminate the infection. First milk or colostrum works even faster (note that colostrum supplements do not work).
Reapplication may be necessary every hour for a few hours, but in almost every case, the infection will be gone well before you could have even gotten an appointment to see the doctor. This remedy works well for newborn babies also, so no need for the eyedrops that are used immediately after birth if you plan to breastfeed.
Probiotic Options
If there is no one breastfeeding in your home, the next best thing would be a few drops of raw cow or goat milk applied to each eye.
I recommend treating both eyes even if only one is showing signs of infection, by the way.
Pinkeye is so contagious, that treating only the infected eye will usually result in having to treat the other eye within a short time anyway, so might as well do both from the beginning.
Raw cow or goat milk is loaded with immunity-boosting probiotics, just like human breastmilk. These beneficial bacteria work immediately on contact to crowd out and eliminate the pathogens at the source of the infection.
The probiotic strains in fresh, unprocessed dairy are especially suited for clearing a pinkeye infection.
Reapplication every hour or so should eliminate the infection quickly, perhaps not quite as fast as breastmilk, but still faster by a long shot than getting to the doctor and filling a prescription.
Note that pasteurized or organic store milk also does not work because they contain no probiotics.
Other Sources of Beneficial Microbes
No fresh from the cow dairy easily available where you live?
You can also mix the contents of a probiotic capsule in a few ounces of water and drip a few drops into the eye.
I recommend this baby probiotic brand as it the strain found in breastmilk and has no other additives.
This has been known to work as well.
Frequent Pinkeye May Indicate Nutritional Deficiency
Are you or any members of your family suffering from pinkeye symptoms on a frequent basis? If so, consider adding a cod liver oil supplement to your daily regimen.
This is the brand my family has used since 2015.
Deficiency in vitamin A, one of the most critical vitamins for optimal eye health, can result in frequent pinkeye infections. Incidentally, it also contributes to other illnesses such as croup and night blindness.Â
Unprocessed cod liver oil that is tested free of impurities is the best source of natural Vitamin A.
If the cod liver oil is processed (most brands are), then the Vitamin A is most likely synthetic.
This is because it has been destroyed by heat or chemical processing. Synthetic vitamin A does not have the same benefits for the eyes.
Multivitamins have the same problem. They contain only synthetic vitamin A or beta carotene. Note that beta carotene is not true vitamin A.
It is a precursor that the body must convert to true vitamin A. Many people simply do not make this conversion very well especially if they have any sort of digestive problems.
How Long Until Improvement?
The pinkeye home remedy described in this article should resolve the infection rapidly.
Usually, symptoms improve within hours. After a few applications, the eye should be fine within 24 hours.
If not, the infection may be viral in nature or related to some other underlying condition. Seeing a doctor is recommended at that point.
Works for Pets Too!
Keep in mind that this pinkeye home remedy doesn’t just work for children and adults.
Believe it or not, this home remedy is also safe to use on pets who have any sort of eye-related bacterial issues.
I’ve personally used it on guinea pigs and cats over the years with great success.
I am so excited about this! I have 2 pregnant dairy goats right now! I have never even milked a goat or cow, so this is going to be quite a new experience! God has been leading me to change almost everything in my family’s diet, so I am happy but apprehensive about having raw milk! If anyone has any tidbits of wisdom on this venture (goat milking!) please shoot it to me!!! Thank you and God bless! (Keep it up Sarah! We need more like YOU!)
Raw goats milk, if you don’t know by now, is completely safe if and only if you milk cleanly and store in a freezer for one hour immediately after milking and put in a refrigerator set to 34 degrees at all times. This prevents any bad bacteria, if present, from growing. Drink all milk within ten days and if at anytime it doesn’t smell right, throw it out.
To watchmom3
Take the baby (usually only one) away as soon as it/they are born, DO NOT let them suckle at all or you will get no milk they will keep her dry.
milk the nanny give them a little milk in a pan stick their nose in the milk (you may need to tilt the pan) and they will eat after a duck or two.
TO MILK:
Goats are funny, wash off the udder with warm water, most like milked from their right side, but we had one that wanted milked from the rear, otherwise she would put her foot in the bucket and spill the milk, or get it dirty. Then the process had to start over.
Good Luck
I have never had to take babies off to get milk. My nanny’s always made enough to share!
I woke up with the beginnings of pinkeye recently – gunked up eye and pick streaks. What was my first thought? HURRAY!!! I can test the raw milk remedy I read about on the Healthy Home Econimist (No really. I actually thought that 🙂 ) I took a small amount of raw milk to work with me and put a drop in each eye every hour. I also had to explain over and over again what the heck I was doing. It was cool to be able to treat it with something I had in my fridge already versus visiting the doctor and taking antiobiotics, AND getting to chance to share a bit a natural medicine with my co-workers. Oh yeah, and it was gone the next day.
Oh yeah. Lovin’ this comment! Thanks for the testimonial Kelli!
A few years ago, I got a horrible case of pink eye. It was late at night when I found out about it (way too late for a doctor appointment) so I went searching through some of my natural remedy books. It was around midnight when I found a “cure” that I had on hand… honey! I took a tiny bit of raw honey and mixed it with a tiny bit of water and dropped it in my eye. By the next morning it looked like it was gone. I did it one more time the next morning, for good measure, but I don’t know that it was necessary. My eye looked like it was sideways and partially slid down my face (I guess from the swelling), it was such a bad case of pink eye. Honey really did the trick. Of course it was sticky so I did follow up about 15 minutes later with a wash of cooled red clover tea (to take away the stickiness and I also read that red clover tea was good for eye problems too)
I tried honey water the last time I had pink eye, just a few weeks ago, and that made it worse. It burned like heck, too. I went right to the fridge and grabbed my raw milk, put some into a bowl (cold) and over the bathroom sink, scooped it up by the handful and bathed my eyes. Instant relief from the burning! It took about 3 days, but it finally started clearing with the raw milk, but I didn’t drop it into my eyes, I just bathed my eyes in the stuff.
I have Sjogren’s Syndrome and tend to have blepharitis and pink eye quite often in autumn and spring. Since pink eye is a viral thing, a doctor is really of little value and antibiotic drops often don’t help – time is what helps. I once received a script from my eye doc for some type of ointment for my eyelids and it GAVE me pinkeye-type symptomatology because of the irritation it created. Now, I use raw milk in my eyes (sometimes I even mix in some cream to make it thicker) and I use plain old coconut oil on my eyelids when they itch. Everything seems to end up IN my eyes eventually, so I try to use the oil only at night before bed. Of course the oils/fats in the milk and cream make your vision blurry for a little while, but it’s worth the end result.
If my eyes and lids are really itching badly, I make up some calendula / chamomile tea and splash that onto my eyes after it’s steeped for about 5-10 minutes and is cooled. Very refreshing. I even drink some while I’m waiting for it to cool enough to use on my eyes. I love stuff that helps from the inside and the outside!
Oops! In my above post, I seem to have eliminated the part about using milk/honey mixture instead of water/honey mixture. When I bathed my eyes with raw milk, I had honey in the milk (not always, but sometimes) and it did help. But the honey and water didn’t work for me and actually seemed to make it worse by making my eyes feel quite gritty. Maybe that was a healing reaction??
“Pink eye” is not a viral thing. It can be, but there are also two other kinds, bacterial and allergic. Antibiotics will certainly work for the bacterial kind if you don’t have success with the home remedies first.
Actually, the type of “pink eye” that is contagious IS actually a virus, usually Adenovirus, and there is an extremely contagious viral conjunctivitis known as EKC, or epidemic keratoconjunctivitis. Many “pink eye” outbreaks are accompanied by an upper respiratory infection, also viral. Certainly bacterial conjunctivitis and allergic conjunctivitis do exist, and those are the “pink eyes” that usually respond to medications/treatments. Viral conjunctivitis is just that- a virus. And like the common cold, you have to let it run it’s course and just try and manage the symptoms and find relief where you can. Obviously, some people have better/stronger immune systems, preventing them from contracting a virus, as there are also some people more prone to getting a virus than others. But if you have an upper respiratory infection, and have passed “pink eye” on or contracted it from another person, then chances are you are dealing with a virus. And unfortunately, these viruses occasionally linger weeks.
A virus can cause a secondary bacterial or worse fungal infection due to the compromise of the corneal epithelium. In any case where your eye is red and so irritated you should really go to your Optometrist and have it checked out. By not going you risk blindness and perforation of your cornea. There are bacterial infection that can perforate your entire cornea within 48 hours. Justifying staying home and treating yourself may cure some of your red eyes but it is really putting yourself at risk of vision loss. Check out an image search of ‘Corneal Ulcer’ to see what you could be at risk of by not being treated
well then Patrick, I hope my doctor can see me within 48 hours or I will be blind? many times it takes longer than that to even get an appointment.
There are 3 major kinds of “pink eye.” Allergic, Viral, and Bacterial. There are lesser likely forms, like fungal infections.
The first two will resolve without antibiotics. The third may or may not clear without treatment but if you don’t use antibiotics, you can develop a corneal ulcer which MUST be treated with antibiotics. You can certainly go to the emergency department, but your primary care doctor, urgent care center or health clinic with license professionals are more than capable of prescribing an antibiotic ointment.
As an emergency medicine physician, I don’t recommend putting any non-ophthalmic substance into the eye. The eye is particularly sensitive to pH. Furthermore, any red eye should be evaluated for scratches to the cornea or foreign body trapped under the eyelid, particularly in contact lens wearers.
You don’t see an optometrist for eye disease. You see an ophthalmologist for eye disease. Optometrists are the trained professionals who fit you for glasses.
One easy way to tell if an initial conjunctivitis infection is either viral or bacterial is how it affects both eyes or more one than the other. Viral tends to start in one eye and doesn’t produce as much yellow mucous, then may or may not start in the other eye days later. Viral will also last longer. Bacterial will usually either start in both eyes or spread within hours to both eyes, Bacterial also tends to have more yellow mucous whilst viral produces tear like fluid. There are antiviral medications which will only work if you get them in right at the start – usually more useful to prevent relapses. Viral is usually considerably more annoying for a longer period unless your bacterial form is an STD based one. Viral will not damage permanently, whereas bacterial in a small number of cases can cause permanent damage if untreated. Also, Herpes has been to known to cause conjunctivitis in rare cases.
I work for an Optometrist and we treat eye diseases every day, including pink eye, corneal ulcers, glacoma, graves, diabetic retinitis, sjogrens, corneal abrasions, foreign body removal, the list goes on and when someone calls in with an emergency (for instance pinkeye) we get them in to see the optometrist the same day. Opthamoligist are MD’s who specialize in the eye, most are used for surgery and to manage severe eye disease.
D….Did you find that raw milk and/or coconut oil helped your blepharitis??
I cannot tell you how happy I am to finally be learning this. I loathe pink eye, and we have already had a bout of it this season. I am new to doing things naturally and am happy to be able to avoid giving my kids the antibiotics. We have only been in the process of our food conversion for about 2 months and I have not ordered the FCLO yet, but I know I need to get on it, and this blog just gives me more motivation to do it this week. Thanks, Sarah
No, anything out of a can would definitely not work.
Is goat milk in the can ok?
I can also attest to the breastmilk remedy. My son got pinkeye. I applied some breastmilk to his eye. Within 2 days, it was completely gone!
That's great, Sarah! My son had pink eye once when I was breastfeeding one of his younger sisters. I put some breastmilk in a little medicine cup and used a dropper to put it in his eye. It went away very quickly!
The homeopathic remedies and immune metabolics work great. For pink eye- the notatum drops (immune metabolic) work wonders. I can avoid pretty much any sickness with these resources…they are safe even on newborns. My 6 week old son caught RSV and he recovered within 48 hours of starting some remedies.
kaley
Hi Kaley, will have to take a look at that website. For sure, yes, there are homeopathic drops that work well for pinkeye .. what's nice about using what I listed in this blog is that you don't even need to spend any money or drive to the healthfood store to get anything. You already have it at home.