Friday, October 13, 2006

Dry Eyes--what your doctor may NOT suspect!


liquid eye
Originally uploaded by Pacito.

The annual physical is fun if they don't find any heart problems, or diabetes or any of the other serious illnesses.

Doctors must be nice to those who have the option of walking out. And they must work harder to show something for a whole morning of efforts. For instance, last time the ophthalmologist told me I had dry eyes.

He prescribed a lubricating eye drop, which I ignored. It could be the strain from looking at the computer screen for hours or, perhaps, something that happens with the age. Who cares?

However, my eyes got progressively itchy and tired, even in the mornings when they should be rested. So I bought the eye drops and, wow, they helped. But that's not the story!

Here's Mayo Clinic on likely causes of dry eyes, and there are hundreds of other web sites that give similar reasons:

For some people, the cause of dry eyes is an imbalance in the composition of their tears. Other people don't produce enough tears to keep their eyes comfortably lubricated. Eyelid problems, medications and other causes, such as environmental factors, also can lead to dry eyes.

Source: Dry eyes: Causes - MayoClinic.com

But my problem turned out to be entirely different and took me months to figure out.  While putting it on the face, I was getting a bit of the moisturizer into the eyes as well!

Can you imagine doing that? If you can’t, but have itchy eyes, do pay attention to how you apply the moisturizer, or cream or whatever.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have suffered from dry eyes for almost two year. Nobody is able to tell me what it is, or what I can do about it!! I have been to several specialist, but nobody knows! It is currently so bad that I can hardly write/read!