Theresa Lynch and an image of her damaged eyelids
You really should take your makeup off before going to bed.
Housekeeper Theresa Lynch found that out the hard way. For 25 years, she didn’t bother removing her mascara before going to bed.
It wasn’t a problem — until painful black lumps swelled in her eyelids.
“They were embedded so deep that particles were building up on top of each other,” she tells Caters News Agency. “I was so uncomfortable. My eyelids were swollen and heavy because I left it for so long.”
Lynch, who’s based in Sydney, Australia, visited a doctor when her eye pain wasn’t alleviated by regular eyedrops.
There, she learned she had calcifications deep within her eyelids, caused by mascara buildup. She had to undergo a 90-minute surgical procedure to remove the bumps.
“It was certainly disabling. She has suffered permanent scarring on her eyelid and the surface of her cornea,” Dr. Dana Robaei, Lynch’s surgeon, tells Caters. “This was an amazing case, I’d never seen anything like it. But this is a risk not many people are aware of.”
Sleeping in makeup comes with other health risks, although generally less dramatic ones than Lynch faced. Most commonly, it clogs up your pores and causes zits. Basically, “You don’t want to leave things on longer than you have to,” dermatologist Dr. David Orentreich tells Cosmo.
Lynch certainly doesn’t. Today, she always takes off her makeup before getting shuteye.
“I had fallen into a bad habit,” Lynch says. “I should never have let it get this far.”
source:nypost