Home remedies · Mouth, teeth, eyes & feet
No home remedy here replaces treatment, and none is talked down. What has done good for generations does good — even if no one ever measured it. Where something is well studied, it says so. Where it is only experience, it says that too.
Pour hot water over a black tea bag, let it steep, take it out and let it cool to lukewarm — never apply it hot. Squeeze lightly and lay it on the closed lid for ten minutes. One bag per eye, and a fresh bag every time. As often in the day as it helps.
Black tea contains tannins. They draw together and are mildly anti-inflammatory — that is what the relief of swelling and itching is usually put down to. The larger part of the effect probably comes from the damp, lukewarm compress itself: it loosens crusts, eases the lid and calms the tightness. The application on the eye is barely studied; it is traditional, and reports from experience speak for it.
A tea bag is not sterile, hence the rule: only on the closed lid, never in the eye, no bag twice and none for both eyes — conjunctivitis travels easily from one to the other. It does not replace treatment for a bacterial infection. A viral one lasts one to two weeks; the compress makes that time easier to bear, not shorter.
Have it seen at once: pain rather than itch, reduced or blurred vision, light sensitivity, heavy one-sided pus, an injured eye or a chemical in it. Likewise with contact lenses — they come out until everything is quiet — and in newborns.
To the doctor or dentist: facial swelling with fever, toothache with trouble opening the mouth, a knocked-out tooth — that is an emergency with a short window. For the eye: sudden loss of vision, severe pain, flashes of light. Sore places in the mouth lasting beyond three weeks.