Disclaimer: All health related matters are best resolved between
one's doctor and oneself. Use the information in this blog post with due
discretion. It may or may not be suitable for you. I just want to share
a few tips that have worked very well for me. Your mileage may vary.
What is dry eye syndrome? For more information - visit this website.
If you are not troubled by dry eyes, good for you. Enjoy the blessings of healthy eyes as long as possible. Wish you healthy eyes and perfect vision for a long long time. :)
Dry eye syndrome may create different problems. The remedies given below have worked well for me, particularly for extreme dry eyes at the time of waking up in the morning.
1) Drink more water. Keep yourself hydrated all the time. Lack of water makes dry eyes worse.
2) Give up or reduce alcohol. Alcohol dehydrates you and dry eyes feel much worse the next morning.
3) Keep your surroundings well humidified. Air conditioners and room heaters make the air very dry. This makes dry eyes worse. Use a humidifier which converts water into mist and sprays the mist to keep surroundings humid.
A word of caution about humidifiers. Water in the humidifier tank tend to breed bacteria rapidly and when such water is converted to mist and sprayed indoors, it tends to cause chest infection. This has been well researched and documented. You don't want to have chest infection while trying to deal with dry eyes. If you must use a humidifier, clean its water tank everyday with vinegar and then put fresh water. Even this may not completely solve the problem as bacteria may grow in other parts of the humidifier which are hard to clean. If you experience chest congestion in the morning after using humidifier, this could be the reason. If cleaning the humidifier does not help, stop using humidifier.
Another way to increase humidity in your bedroom is to use the shower in the attached bathroom (if you have one) before going to bed. Keep the bathroom door open and take a good long hot shower before going to bed. Or just run the shower for 10 minutes. The steam produced by hot water humidifies the surroundings to some extent. Keep the bathroom door open so that humidity seeps into the bedroom.
4) Turmeric. Magic herb. Increase turmeric intake. Drink a few glasses of turmeric milk during the day and one final before going to bed. Turmeric has many health benefits and reducing dry eye symptoms is one of them. Add a pinch of finely ground turmeric powder to a cup of hot milk, add sugar, crushed black pepper, almond powder to taste. Everything other than milk and turmeric is optional. This makes a very tasty drink for anytime. Turmeric does not dissolve in milk or water. So you need to shake it well at the end and drink it all in one last gulp to get the turmeric into body and not leave the residue at the bottom of the cup. :)
5) Warm compress. Dip a clean piece of cloth in comfortably hot water, wring to remove excess water, test it on the inside of wrists to make sure it is not too hot and then place it on eyes for a few minutes. This relaxes eyes and helps reduce dry eyes. This can be done as many times as needed during the day and one last time before going to bed. You can also try ready made compresses which you can heat up in a microwave oven for 30 seconds and then place it on your eyes.
6) Keep lubricating eye drops near all the time. Dry eye problem tends to get progressively worse or gets worse during winter months when the heater dries up the air. It becomes hard to open eyes in the morning without first putting a drop or two of lubricating drops. If you try to force open when the eyes are very dry, you may risk having a corneal abrasion which will result in debilitating condition for good 5-6 hours till the eyes heal themselves after excessive tearing and pain. This is the worst aspect of dry eyes, having to face corneal abrasion right in the morning.
7) Sometime the entire eye socket assembly is so dry in the morning when you wake up that even before you can manage to put lubricating eye drops, slightest eye movement can cause a corneal abrasion leading to swelling of the entire eye, extreme redness, unstoppable reflexive tearing / watering, stinging pain, inability to open eyes and inability to keep them closed due to the feeling of a foreign particle. Once this happens, there is no easy solution. You just have to deal with it till the eyes become normal on their own. Depending on how badly cornea got scratched and scuffed, it may take 6-8 hours and may require some painkiller to deal with swelling. It is hard to do anything during this time and you will be completely down. Good thing is eyes heal on their own in most of the cases without causing any permanent damage after corneal abrasion. It is just those 6-8 hours which are extremely miserable. If you experience frequent and serious corneal abrasions, consult your doctor. It could be more complicated than mere dry eye.
One very effective way to avoid corneal abrasion in the morning is to take precaution the night before. After following above tips, follow this ritual before going to bed.
- Wash eyes with comfortably hot/warm water.
- After drying the eyes, put the nighttime severe dry-eye-gel ointment in the eyes which is nothing but a combination of petrolatum (petroleum jelly) and mineral oil.
- Close eyes. Now take regular petroleum jelly (Vaseline). With clean fingers apply small amount of regular petrolatum jelly on upper and lower eye lids.
- After sometime, due to body temperature, petroleum jelly may melt to become semi-liquid. So keep a clean piece of cloth / tissue to wipe off the excess if it bothers you.
Next morning, you may still feel dryness in the eyes but it won't be so bad to give you a corneal abrasion which can knock you down for 6-8 hours. Since entire eye assembly is well lubricated and stays well lubricated during the night due to petroleum jelly, all the parts of eyes are relatively moist. You won't have red eye, pain, reflexive tearing and loss of your productive day. Put a couple of lubricating drops to gain some moisture and you are good to open your eyes and start your day.
Simply putting lubricating eye drops in the night does not help in case of severe dry eyes. It may be because lubricating eye drops are not viscous enough. They probably evaporate fast and leave eyes very dry in the morning. Since petroleum jelly is more viscous, it tends to keep entire eye socket soft and moist for longer time.
8) Ghee (Clarified butter). Great help but may not be as convenient of petroleum jelly. Also depending upon the ghee, it may be somewhat sandy or too fluid to be comfortable. But it is safe and definitely helps. As an alternative, try applying ghee a few times a week, take a short nap and then wash it off or take shower. If you apply ghee at night, you will probably end up replacing pillow covers and bed covers more often. Ghee melts faster and spreads everywhere creating a lovely mess. :)
9) Reduce electronic glare. If you can't avoid using computer monitors, mobiles, tablets etc., try to use the display mode which is less harmful to eyes like blue light filter, night mode etc. This tip has been hard to follow but I use night mode and blue light filter from 7 pm to 7 am.
10) Pain killers - easily available over the counter painkillers like ibuprofen make dry eyes worse especially if taken before going to sleep. Avoid them. If you must take them, take them a few hours before going to sleep.
11) Hygrometer- simple device to monitor humidity in your room. You can buy one for less than $10. Good way to make sure your room is adequately humidified. After getting a hygrometer, I realized my surroundings were adequately humid without requiring additional humidification. Interesting discovery.
12) 5% Sodium Chloride ophthalmic eye drops. Use this only if suggested by your doctor. It is available without prescription and recommended for relief from corneal edema (swelling of cornea). Although this medication burns a bit, it is quite useful if you have the particular problem.
13) Omega 3 supplement - recommended. Can't say if it has been helpful or not as I was taking it all along much before the onset of dry eyes.
14) Vitamin A supplement - dry eyes may be due vitamin A deficiency. Taking supplement did not make any difference for me.
It has been a long process of self discovery over last 10+ years. Lot of trial and error to come up with these home remedies. Thanks to Dr. Google, Dr.YouTube along with human doctors :)
I will update the post if I come across any other useful remedies to deal with dry eye syndrome. Feel free to write in comments if you have other tips.
Rest assured it is not as bad as it sounds. It is very distressing initially when you experience dry eye symptoms without knowing what the problem is. After consulting your doctor and coming up with a preventive routine, it is quite manageable. Right now there is no permanent cure for dry eye syndrome although a few experimental cures like laser surgery, heat treatment etc. are in the offing. Let's wait and hope for better treatment and permanent cure.
Note: When it came to self-help-home remedies, Mahatma Gandhi used to ask people to follow one simple but very important principle. When he invited readers to send self-help-home-remedies to be published in his newspaper 'Harijan', he asked them 'send only those home remedies that you have personally followed yourself. Don't send remedies that you have heard from somebody and so on.'. I have followed that diktat here and continue to do so with new home remedies that I may discover in future. Try it on yourself before suggesting to others. :)
What is dry eye syndrome? For more information - visit this website.
If you are not troubled by dry eyes, good for you. Enjoy the blessings of healthy eyes as long as possible. Wish you healthy eyes and perfect vision for a long long time. :)
Dry eye syndrome may create different problems. The remedies given below have worked well for me, particularly for extreme dry eyes at the time of waking up in the morning.
1) Drink more water. Keep yourself hydrated all the time. Lack of water makes dry eyes worse.
2) Give up or reduce alcohol. Alcohol dehydrates you and dry eyes feel much worse the next morning.
3) Keep your surroundings well humidified. Air conditioners and room heaters make the air very dry. This makes dry eyes worse. Use a humidifier which converts water into mist and sprays the mist to keep surroundings humid.
A word of caution about humidifiers. Water in the humidifier tank tend to breed bacteria rapidly and when such water is converted to mist and sprayed indoors, it tends to cause chest infection. This has been well researched and documented. You don't want to have chest infection while trying to deal with dry eyes. If you must use a humidifier, clean its water tank everyday with vinegar and then put fresh water. Even this may not completely solve the problem as bacteria may grow in other parts of the humidifier which are hard to clean. If you experience chest congestion in the morning after using humidifier, this could be the reason. If cleaning the humidifier does not help, stop using humidifier.
Another way to increase humidity in your bedroom is to use the shower in the attached bathroom (if you have one) before going to bed. Keep the bathroom door open and take a good long hot shower before going to bed. Or just run the shower for 10 minutes. The steam produced by hot water humidifies the surroundings to some extent. Keep the bathroom door open so that humidity seeps into the bedroom.
4) Turmeric. Magic herb. Increase turmeric intake. Drink a few glasses of turmeric milk during the day and one final before going to bed. Turmeric has many health benefits and reducing dry eye symptoms is one of them. Add a pinch of finely ground turmeric powder to a cup of hot milk, add sugar, crushed black pepper, almond powder to taste. Everything other than milk and turmeric is optional. This makes a very tasty drink for anytime. Turmeric does not dissolve in milk or water. So you need to shake it well at the end and drink it all in one last gulp to get the turmeric into body and not leave the residue at the bottom of the cup. :)
5) Warm compress. Dip a clean piece of cloth in comfortably hot water, wring to remove excess water, test it on the inside of wrists to make sure it is not too hot and then place it on eyes for a few minutes. This relaxes eyes and helps reduce dry eyes. This can be done as many times as needed during the day and one last time before going to bed. You can also try ready made compresses which you can heat up in a microwave oven for 30 seconds and then place it on your eyes.
6) Keep lubricating eye drops near all the time. Dry eye problem tends to get progressively worse or gets worse during winter months when the heater dries up the air. It becomes hard to open eyes in the morning without first putting a drop or two of lubricating drops. If you try to force open when the eyes are very dry, you may risk having a corneal abrasion which will result in debilitating condition for good 5-6 hours till the eyes heal themselves after excessive tearing and pain. This is the worst aspect of dry eyes, having to face corneal abrasion right in the morning.
7) Sometime the entire eye socket assembly is so dry in the morning when you wake up that even before you can manage to put lubricating eye drops, slightest eye movement can cause a corneal abrasion leading to swelling of the entire eye, extreme redness, unstoppable reflexive tearing / watering, stinging pain, inability to open eyes and inability to keep them closed due to the feeling of a foreign particle. Once this happens, there is no easy solution. You just have to deal with it till the eyes become normal on their own. Depending on how badly cornea got scratched and scuffed, it may take 6-8 hours and may require some painkiller to deal with swelling. It is hard to do anything during this time and you will be completely down. Good thing is eyes heal on their own in most of the cases without causing any permanent damage after corneal abrasion. It is just those 6-8 hours which are extremely miserable. If you experience frequent and serious corneal abrasions, consult your doctor. It could be more complicated than mere dry eye.
One very effective way to avoid corneal abrasion in the morning is to take precaution the night before. After following above tips, follow this ritual before going to bed.
- Wash eyes with comfortably hot/warm water.
- After drying the eyes, put the nighttime severe dry-eye-gel ointment in the eyes which is nothing but a combination of petrolatum (petroleum jelly) and mineral oil.
- Close eyes. Now take regular petroleum jelly (Vaseline). With clean fingers apply small amount of regular petrolatum jelly on upper and lower eye lids.
- After sometime, due to body temperature, petroleum jelly may melt to become semi-liquid. So keep a clean piece of cloth / tissue to wipe off the excess if it bothers you.
Next morning, you may still feel dryness in the eyes but it won't be so bad to give you a corneal abrasion which can knock you down for 6-8 hours. Since entire eye assembly is well lubricated and stays well lubricated during the night due to petroleum jelly, all the parts of eyes are relatively moist. You won't have red eye, pain, reflexive tearing and loss of your productive day. Put a couple of lubricating drops to gain some moisture and you are good to open your eyes and start your day.
Simply putting lubricating eye drops in the night does not help in case of severe dry eyes. It may be because lubricating eye drops are not viscous enough. They probably evaporate fast and leave eyes very dry in the morning. Since petroleum jelly is more viscous, it tends to keep entire eye socket soft and moist for longer time.
8) Ghee (Clarified butter). Great help but may not be as convenient of petroleum jelly. Also depending upon the ghee, it may be somewhat sandy or too fluid to be comfortable. But it is safe and definitely helps. As an alternative, try applying ghee a few times a week, take a short nap and then wash it off or take shower. If you apply ghee at night, you will probably end up replacing pillow covers and bed covers more often. Ghee melts faster and spreads everywhere creating a lovely mess. :)
9) Reduce electronic glare. If you can't avoid using computer monitors, mobiles, tablets etc., try to use the display mode which is less harmful to eyes like blue light filter, night mode etc. This tip has been hard to follow but I use night mode and blue light filter from 7 pm to 7 am.
10) Pain killers - easily available over the counter painkillers like ibuprofen make dry eyes worse especially if taken before going to sleep. Avoid them. If you must take them, take them a few hours before going to sleep.
11) Hygrometer- simple device to monitor humidity in your room. You can buy one for less than $10. Good way to make sure your room is adequately humidified. After getting a hygrometer, I realized my surroundings were adequately humid without requiring additional humidification. Interesting discovery.
12) 5% Sodium Chloride ophthalmic eye drops. Use this only if suggested by your doctor. It is available without prescription and recommended for relief from corneal edema (swelling of cornea). Although this medication burns a bit, it is quite useful if you have the particular problem.
13) Omega 3 supplement - recommended. Can't say if it has been helpful or not as I was taking it all along much before the onset of dry eyes.
14) Vitamin A supplement - dry eyes may be due vitamin A deficiency. Taking supplement did not make any difference for me.
It has been a long process of self discovery over last 10+ years. Lot of trial and error to come up with these home remedies. Thanks to Dr. Google, Dr.YouTube along with human doctors :)
I will update the post if I come across any other useful remedies to deal with dry eye syndrome. Feel free to write in comments if you have other tips.
Rest assured it is not as bad as it sounds. It is very distressing initially when you experience dry eye symptoms without knowing what the problem is. After consulting your doctor and coming up with a preventive routine, it is quite manageable. Right now there is no permanent cure for dry eye syndrome although a few experimental cures like laser surgery, heat treatment etc. are in the offing. Let's wait and hope for better treatment and permanent cure.
Note: When it came to self-help-home remedies, Mahatma Gandhi used to ask people to follow one simple but very important principle. When he invited readers to send self-help-home-remedies to be published in his newspaper 'Harijan', he asked them 'send only those home remedies that you have personally followed yourself. Don't send remedies that you have heard from somebody and so on.'. I have followed that diktat here and continue to do so with new home remedies that I may discover in future. Try it on yourself before suggesting to others. :)
2 comments:
Thank you, Mahesh for a detailed explanation of the Dry Eye Syndrome and remedies available. Your post is very, very useful. Though I do not have this problem, I can suggest to anyone that I know to read this article and find relief.
I have read refreshing humorous articles by you and articles that promote knowledge.
With this painstakingly written, elaborate article, I feel I should call you Guruji!
Thanks Sunaath Sir.
Just passing on the information. I found most of it on the web. So adding my share back to the pool. If someone finds it useful,as I did of others, so much the better!
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