Note: I’m going to break this one up into a two parter (note: part 2 is now available), as dry eye can be really complicated. I tend to go overboard with patients when educating them on the matter because I’d like to say I consider myself to be a bit of a dry eye specialist at this point. But here we go!
What’s the deal with dry eye? That can’t be that big of a deal right? I mean, if your eyes are a little dry, just use some eye drops!
While that might be what your initial reaction would be, it couldn’t be further from the truth! Dry eye disease is an increasingly common disease that is becoming more prevalent over the last two decades since researchers began looking more into the condition.
Symptoms of Dry Eyes
So what are the symptoms patients frequently come to see us with when they have mild dry eye? Most folks will tell us that their vision is blurry and often is worse later in the day. Some will describe their eyes as feeling like there’s sand in them or it’s just gritty and uncomfortable. Patients often report increased eye strain and sometimes even headaches. Many patients even come in saying their eyes are watery! Don’t worry, I’ll explain that one a little later.
You might notice that I didn’t say patients come in saying their eyes are dry. While some will tell have that as their chief concern, the majority of patients don’t actually tell us their eyes are dry.
Causes of Dry Eyes
Why do we develop dry eye? What’s happening to make your eyes feel the way they do, when they used to be fine? There’s a lot of risk factors at play here, so I’ll just go into some of the major ones.
1. Age – As we gain a few more candles on the birthday cake of life, our bodies just tend to dry eye more. It happens to all of us no matter what we do. Unless you manage to figure out the way to reverse the aging process, not much we can do here.
2. Gender – Sorry ladies… Women are far more prone to developing dry eye! Some of it has to do with makeup use, hormone (especially estrogen) fluctuations, and a number of other factors, but women are just far more likely to develop dry eye younger and often with increased severity.
3. Medications – This is one of the reasons why it’s important to tell all your doctors about all your medications. If you see your primary care provider, your dentist, your eye doctors (us!), and any other doctors, you need to tell them ALL the medications and supplements you’re taking. You never know what the side effects might be.
One of the most common medications I see patients taking is over the counter anti-histamines like Zyrtec, Allegra, and Claritin! Do you know what the most common side effect of those medications are? You guessed it! Dryness!
4. Other medical conditions – Inflammatory conditions and other systemic diseases tend to cause a lot of dry eye issues for patients. Do you have history of an auto-immune disease like rheumatoid arthritis? Psoriasis? Eczema? Lupus? Crohns or IBS? All of these and many more can cause dry eye problems. What about other conditions that aren’t really auto-immune? Diabetes, Rosacea, Thyroid Disease (Low and High Thyroid!) and of course many others.
5. Computer Use – We’re living in a more digital age by the day. Growing up, I barely got to play with my GameBoy and had to share one between my three siblings. That definitely lead to a lot of arguments about who’s turn it was next!
Now so many of our jobs rely on computer use and many of my patients will admit they’re on the computer all day at work. Take that into account along with the amount of time spent on phones, laptops, and tablets at home for personal use and you can sometimes be having 10-16 hours of screen time per day! While the computer screen isn’t inherently bad, what happens is your brain is so focused on looking at the screen, that it forgets blinking is important. The average blink rate decreases from 15-20 times per minute down to just 4-5 times per minute. That means your eyes are open longer and your tears don’t replenish as often, leading to more dryness!
That’s where we’ll end for today’s installment. Dry eye gets a lot more complicated than most people think and I think I could go on for another few paragraphs on treatments and other topics involving dry eye so easily! I’ll save those for the next post though!
Dr. Nick