Do your eyes ever burn ,sting or frequently tear up ?If so you may be suffering from Dry eyes
How about occasionally feel sandy or gritty like they have something in them?
If so you may be suffering from Dry eyes
Key to healthy happy eye is beautiful tear film so its like windshield of the car.So when the tear film is not smooth or when you dont have enough amount of tears or like if you dont have right kind of tears then your eyes suffer and causes inflammation in the ocular surface which then leads to uncomfortable ,feels like tearing,sand so it can be either that you are not making enough amount of tears required or not making right type of tears .But those symptoms can interfere with so many different aspects of your everyday life.So you might be all confused by right type of tears.What exactly it refers to ?So our eyes has an ideal composition for the tear film and unfortunately it can be disturbed very easily by aging,our hormones or environmental changes which is out of our control ,these cant be controlled.
What is dry eye?
When your eyes don’t feel like they’re making proper moisture you probably have dry eye syndrome.
Dry eye is a syndrome where either the tear quality is not as good as we should be or quantity is not as much as we want it to be. And the tears also dont stay on the surface of the eye to stay stable in between our blinks.
Symptoms
- Gritty
- Irritation
- Burning
- Watering
- Sting or have bloodshot
When we talk about dry eye ,we talk about it being a multifactorial disease.It means that there can be never any one reason why patients eyes are dry.So whatever the reason it can be if you dont treat dry eyes in time it will just get worse because its not a problem that will simply go away.Dry eyes leads to fluctuations in the vision so people even visit eye hospital/clinic with a complaint of vision.So when its related to our ocular surface being unhealthy not all the eye remedies can be equal so if we are picking any normal lubricating drops, it cannot be the only treatment because some of the eye drops have preservatives in them ,some of them have redness relievers in them and different types of tears can also not be the right thing for the patient .
Causes
- Age
- Hormonal imbalance
- Diet
- Environment (being outside in windy or sunny conditions)
- Skin type
- Genetics
- Medications like antihistamines,antidepressants
- Refractive surgery like Lasik,Prk
- Contact lens wear
- Screen time(digital source like phone or computer typically intensify your symptoms and vision often isnt as clear as it could be even with glasses or contact lens)
So if you have dry eye the best way to find out will probably be to know first what’s causing it.
Certain things you can do on your own.
- In winter time you can increase the humidity in your environment .
- You can decrease your contact lens wear.
- Be careful in positioning of your screen .
- Wear sunglasses outside so that the wind and uv rays from sun is not coming directly to your eyes.
- Can take break from social media from your phone,ipads,laptops to make sure your eyes get rest.
- Take a blink ,take a break ,talk to people ,just step away from your screen.
- Artificial tears which you will find easily with people having mild dry eye but if you are having it not useful .In this case you need to consult an optometrist/ophthalmologist.
Its very important to talk to an eye specialist who can diagnose whether you have a chronic problem or not and accordingly take the proper steps to treat dry eye.There are other methods to treat dry eye where we can put certain plugs in the tear drains to actually plug the tears to keep more tears on the surface of the eye.
The more dry we are ,the more dry we get and if we dont take preventive measures it just will continue to get even worse .So take care of your eyes .
Monika Mandal
Vision specialist