Q: As I get older, I gradually have noticed my eyes feel more uncomfortable in general. Worse in the summer, but really all year round I notice more often I rub them to feel better. Any good long term solutions?
A: Yours sounds like a very common symptom. As we age, our eyes generally produce less natural tears fluid, allowing the surface to become dry and more prone to irritants, like allergies. Many people mistakenly first buy an over the counter allergy or “take the red out” eye drop at the pharmacy. In reality, these may help some, but he underlying cause is usually dry eye disease ( DED).
DED is most prevalent in women, but increase for all of us with each birthday. Surprisingly, the clue for many people is a change in vision clarity. Often, when looking at our computer screen, notice that blinking or rubbing our eyes makes our vision sharper! This indicates eye dryness, not allergies. The actual feeling of dryness, or grittiness, or vague irritation can be equally in both eyes, or more so in one than the other.
Nonetheless, the treatments are either using an eye drop or having tiny “tear saver implants” placed painlessly in the tear drainage ducts of the lower eyelids. When I say eye drops, I mean either a drop to enhance our eye surface moisture, like Miebo, a great product available over the counter in Europe, but only by prescription here. But if your in office testing includes ear fluid testing, and inflammation is found very commonly, we prescribe an ophthalmic anti-inflammatory eye medicine to reduce or stop the inflammation.
Our eyes normally produce a little tear fluid with each blink, and it coats our eyes to keep vision sharp and comfortable. Each blink however, also draws our tear fluid off the eyes into tiny tubes or tear ducts in the inner corner of each eye. Out tears actually drain into our throat eventually, which is why many eye drops give us a bitter taste after a few minutes!
Tear saver plugs, called “lacrimal plugs”, are very effective and equally unknown to most people. Placed in the lower tear ducts painlessly in a few seconds, most commonly we use tear plugs that last up to 6 months before they dissolve on their own. Our patients using this treatment simply have a fresh pair of plugs inserted in 6 months after their annual eye exam. Generally, these patients can reduce or eliminate the need for eye drops entirely.
Ask your eye doctor about the cause of your symptoms, and be sure they are doing in-office tear sample analysis to utilize the most accurate treatment for your specific type of DED. I should add, we often use 7 day diagnostic plugs first, so patients can try them out without a long term commitment. And as patients often ask, most medical insurance covers DED as an eye disease, while vision plans do not. Restoring your natural eye moisture with your own natural tear fluid is far better than anything you can buy in a bottle!