Best Diet for Dry Eyes? 5 Dry Eye Diet Tips

well eyes and shine in today's video we're going to be talking about the best diet for dry eyes and sharing my top five dry eye diet tips that you can start incorporating into your daily lifestyle that should help you begin your journey of resolving dry eye symptoms in your dry eyes naturally now this education is coming to you live and so thank you for everybody who is able to join us live please let us know in the comment section in the discussion box if your doctor has ever if you've ever talked to them about your dry eye symptoms and if they've ever talked to you about diet or lifestyle modification or any sort of vitamin nutraceutical anything that could help you with your dry eyes Beyond just medications and treatments in the clinic I think that would be really valuable to hear everybody's experience with that now if this is your first time here on the live stream or catching us on the replay I am Dr Joseph Allen I am a bird certified doctor of Optometry I'm a fellow of the American Academy of Optometry as well as a diplomate of the American Board of Optometry and not only is iCare a huge passion of mine and my profession but specifically dry eyes is something that I've suffered with since I was late High School my early college Years and then nutrition is something that I just find really interesting and I'm passionate about it in terms of lifestyle change right the if you've ever heard that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of treatment so I'd much rather try to educate as many people as I can help them prevent disease rather than just having to see them in the clinic and having to prescribe medications and treatments there so later what we're going to do is first we're going to go through the education I want to provide this information to you and then sticking around because we'll do some live Q and A and we'll even um be able to have you people who are live here ask questions and be able to answer them and especially if you have questions about dry eye definitely hold on to those um because I know a lot of people ask questions about dry eye here on YouTube and social media as well as in the clinic and there's no such thing as a dumb question right if you have a question about it I guarantee you another thousand people have that same exact question we do have a membership for the channel and we are going to prioritize anybody who is a member to our Channel we add that as an extra benefit for people who support us so thank you to all of our supporters uh for the channel otherwise without further ado let's talk about diet and dry eye so first if you were to come to see me as a patient in the clinic or if you were just to see me as a friend on the street uh you'd be like hey Dr Allen or Joey uh I'm having these symptoms right I'm having discomfort my eyes are red I'm having reflex tearing my eyes are just watering occasionally and your eyes are sensitive and maybe even your vision's fluctuating like things are clear one moment you blink blink blink and suddenly you know now things are fluctuating so that can be I'll be a signs and symptoms of dry eye well with dry eye it can be caused by many things and this is a simplified what I have on the screen here is a simplified version of What's called the Vicious Cycle of dry eye when you don't produce enough tears or your tear film evaporates too quickly because you have not enough oils or good oils being produced by your eyelids then without this you have dryness and then your eyelids basically you blink and it scratches the eye and you get ocular surface damage and your body does what it tries to heal that by recruiting inflammatory mediators just as if you were to hurt your knee in an acute stage inflammation can be really good at healing the tissue but chronically inflammation can cause a lot of problems especially for the eyes as it disrupts the cheer film it can shut down the production of tears and inflammation can aggravate the stability of your tear film causing it only to get worse and so a lot of treatments in the eye clinic medications and procedures are are aimed at reducing inflammation so it makes sense that when we're talking about diet we want to be aiming for something that is anti-inflammatory and so at this time the best diet for dry eyes amongst dry eye specialists and then literature is supportive for anti-inflammatory diets now if you're like myself I grew up here in the United States I ate I thought growing up I ate pretty healthy because I would occasionally eat fruits and vegetables I think in my family I eat probably the most fruits and veggies but you know it's just part of our culture we generally eat a lot of fat a lot of salt because that tastes good to us and a lot of Highly refined carbohydrates and sugars and with all of that our food also is highly processed and unfortunately that does all contribute to higher amounts of inflammation and so again I've been discussing with other dry eye specialists and talking about what they recommend and what kind of what the research points to the two diets that come up the most from another dry eye specialists would be either the Whole 30 diet and let me know if anybody has tried The Whole30 diet or if they eat the Mediterranean diet or something more on the plant dominant side of the Mediterranean diet now Mediterranean diet has probably the most supportive research as a more optimal diet for people who have risk of cardiovascular disease diabetes as well as arthritis and the plant dominant side of it is stressed because in the word Mediterranean the Mediterranean Sea is a large place and there's a lot of cultures around there and over time people have confused really what that means and unfortunately I've even friends who will think oh I'm eating Italian food I'll order a pizza like a deep dish meat lovers Pizza and I think they're since they're eating Italian food they're eating the Mediterranean diet and unfortunately it just isn't true so couple of things that you can start considering to change in your lifestyle that may help number one is that of fatty fish so this includes things like salmon mackerel and Herring and again let me know if if you like these type of foods I personally love salmon I don't think I've had I've personally ever had mackerel or herring in fact maybe not I've had pickled herring at like a holiday get-togethers um some people really like that some people not but again let me know what you think but the reason why fatty fish is recommended for people for diets specifically for dry eye has to do with omega-3 content if you've never heard of Omega-3s these are polyunsaturated fatty acids and fish have higher amounts of them and this has been found to reduce inflammation it's been extremely uh research it's been researched a lot mostly for cardiovascular health but more research is now looking into joint health as well as neurological benefits for the brain and even the retina of the eye and there's at least one study that I found really fascinating that showed it reduced C-reactive protein which is or CRP which is a biomarker for inflammation that we often test for in medical clinics when we have a patient with suspicion of an inflammatory condition and again Omega-3s have shown to help reduce that specifically for dry eyes the reason why Omega-3s and diets that have more Omega-3s in them are are beneficial to dry eye because they've been found to decrease lacrimal gland cell death your lacrimal gland is the major gland above your eyeball on each side that produces your the vast majority of your tears and the omega-3 this is what I find most beneficial is omega-3 has been found to improve Clarity of your meibomian gland secretions which a lot of patients including myself have had issues with their meibomian glands and their eyelids and now if you're new to the channel you haven't seen our other videos where I've talked about meibomian gland dysfunction if you ever go up to the to the mirror and you hold down your eyelids and you look right like the edge there like we have in the photo you might see these little white bumps and those white belts really shouldn't be there for patients who don't have my booming gland dysfunction if I push gently on their eyelid during an exam we should see oils almost Fountain out of their glands like a little geyser it should be nice and clear but unfortunately for most of us if we push on it these glands are inflamed and instead of a nice clear liquid oil we end up getting a thick mucus or sometimes even like a hard wax coming out and that's kind of what that picture looks like when we look at some of these eyelids and again omega-3s have shown to improve Clarity of these secretions and with this improved Clarity we notice that their tear film doesn't evaporate as quickly and we measure that in the clinic by doing what's called a t-but or a tier breakup time and we want a tier breakup time greater than 10 seconds so you should be able to Blink hold your eyes open for 10 seconds or more and we should be able to still see the tears staying stable on the surface of the eye it also is shown to increase your Shermer score which is the tier volume that we measure in the clinic and then it decreases an ocular surface disease index score which is the osdi score and that's something that we use in research as well as in some clinics to help measure and monitor the severity of dry eyes so with fatty fish if you're trying to think hey you know I don't eat too much fish maybe if I want to start doing this how much should I eat so the American Heart Association as well as the Arthritis Foundation have both recommended about three to six ounce servings of at least twice a week and so that that should get you a pretty good amount of Omega-3s naturally in your diet now I know not everybody's a big fish lover um I even my father he's not a big Sushi guy doesn't like like fresh fish he doesn't like fatty or dark dark fish is sometimes seen in the research as fatty fish and if you don't if you're not a fish lover or for environmental reasons pollution reasons uh or ethical reasons you don't want to eat fish you can consider taking Omega-3 supplements there's a lot of brands in Omega-3s and I plan to do future videos going really deep into Omega-3s and different brands and and kind of buying tips for figuring that out but even if you don't want to take fish oils you can consider taking algae-based Omega-3s because that's where fish even get their Omega-3s to begin with it starts off with algae making it and then it passes down the food chain to the fish and so that's ultimately uh where where an option that you can do to get your omega-3s outside of oily fish next would be fruit and veggies right surprise uh fruits and veggies it seems like no matter what or how many times we're told since we were kids and then getting into adulthood it turns out the vast majority of people still fail to meet their daily requirements of fruits and veggies and uh it's something that I've been trying to even do myself more in the last decade of my life the big reasons we want fruits and veggies is because antioxidants which helps stabilize free radicals which is part of kind of our aging and the metabolism of how our body functions we develop a lot of free radicals and antioxidants can help stop that and then anthocyanins which are a pigment that you find in a lot of dark colored berries and fruits this is like the Blackberry blueberries strawberries raspberries these anthocyanins have anti-inflammatory infect effects and so again we want the anti-inflammatory diet and so making sure to incorporate dark berries and fruits and veggies are are going to be beneficial vegetables is another one this is not just good for the eyes because of vitamin C vitamin E but also it reduces inflammatory biomarkers in the blood and the eyeball in the retina specifically has needs a lot of lutein and zeaxanthine to protect the macula or the very delicate structure of the retina and so you can get that also by eating a lot of green leafy vegetables nuts and seeds is another great thing to incorporate more diets that do incorporate more nuts and seeds including walnuts almonds pistachios is one of my big favorites let me know if you've ever had pistachio ice cream it's it's amazing hemp seeds is another good one flax seeds and chia seeds are also really good the benefit of nuts and seeds is that they're a good source of poly and and monounsaturated monounsaturated fat fats um and that is shown to lower cholesterol and heart disease risk oh these different nuts and seeds also have a higher amount of what's called ala this is Alpha line linoleenic acid thank you ala uh is a component of Omega-3 and is more of a precursor and you can get Omega-3s from dietary sources of nuts and seeds however it's a really small amount compared to the more bioavailable form that you get from fish and from Omega-3 supplements and there's some research suggesting it just doesn't your body isn't very good at converting it to that amount and so it's really hard to get adequate amounts of Omega-3s just by eating nuts and seeds there's a lot of there's not too much research talking about that limiting factor and I've been trying to dig into it and so again I'll have more videos coming out soon looking more into dietary and omega-3 supplement sources for Omega-3s but nuts and seeds also have magnesium vitamin e potassium fiber which is really good and then even pistachios which I put in the little picture there also has some of lutein in it again great for the eyes beans now beans is it beans is actually a one that I think again people Overlook uh it's amazing source of fiber and protein and also extremely cheap for the amount of fiber protein that you get uh for per dollar very cheap great nutrient that we I think people just need to incorporate more into our culture and eating uh they have a lot of B vitamins potassium and phytonutrients that have also been shown in research to lower the C-reactive protein inflammation but the most fascinating thing I found a long time ago is that they have higher antioxidant content in fact it's very similar to blueberries I think most people have heard maybe at some point that blueberries have a really high antioxidant content but turns out that red kidney beans red beans and pinto beans are just about the same amount of antioxidants than blueberries that blueberries have and so if you can try to incorporate an extra serving of beans at some point throughout the day you're going to be boosting that antioxidant amount in your body number five is whole grains uh now again one of the big issues that we've been kind of fighting in the healthcare industry and especially around nutrition and diet is that a lot of people have low fiber content and we're eating highly refined grains so reaching for just simple things changing it from you know if you're having a sandwich with white bread or a white bun maybe try whole wheat bread instead instead of white rice maybe try brown rice or something like wild rice something that's not as refined these whole grains are going to have higher amounts of fiber which is really beneficial for your gut not only because it keeps things moving but there's a lot of research going into your microbiome and how fiber helps fuel the microbiome and there's even some specific research on the microbiome in relation to the retina in the back of your eye for diabetes macular generation and other inflammatory conditions as well as the the surface of the eye with dry eye disease and while that research is still very fresh and young and we need more of it it is beginning to look really fascinating fiber also helps you lose weight because you feel more satiated it fills you up and so it's really good for helping control your appetite and then again it has been shown to help lower inflammatory biomarkers and I do put some research publication articles some some resources if you are a nerd like me and like to like to stay up all night reading articles and then um for Q a just uh we're about to shift over to q a so if you have questions please put them in the Q a the comment chat box but put some question marks before and then afterward so that we can see it a little bit easier but as a bonus tip because for you that stung around this late stuck around this late in the education in the video I want to have an extra sixth tip and that's about hydration and we're talking so much about food and foods that you can incorporate a lot of us forget to drink enough water throughout the day and there is evidence in the research that shows that if you are dehydrated patients with dry eyes also have higher amounts of tear film osmolarity and that's a higher salt content in your tear film which causes irritation think of it like salt precipitating into your tears if you have more salt in your tears it's like opening your eyes under water in an ocean all of that salt water irritates the surface of the eye and that's kind of what's going on when you have an increased to your film osmolarity so a big question is how much water do you need to drink it does depend on body size and activity there is technically a guideline based by the U.S national academies of Sciences engineering and Medicine of around 3.7 liters for a fluid fluids in a day for a man and then about 2.7 liters for a woman throughout the day but that also you have to account about 20 of those fluids are coming from food and dietary sources especially from fruits and vegetables so um you maybe have heard that eight glasses or ten glasses of water a day I think that's a good rule of thumb but definitely listen to your body this is something I've been trying to do personally more in the last few years is if I'm not you know you know if you've maybe adequately hydrated if you don't feel thirsty also if your urine is colorless or a light yellow color so if I do use the restroom and I notice things are dark yellow tells me it's my body telling me I need to drink more water one kind of thing I used when I was in wrestling in high school and then when I gained my Freshman 15 in college and I wanted to lose weight I would if I thought I was hungry I would first drink a glass or two of water wait 15 minutes and then if I was still hungry after that then I would go ahead and eat that's something that I would use and I'm still trying to use it to kind of remind myself I need to drink more water especially before before and during a meal so these are just some great tips foods for thought right so thank you guys so much for listening to this education I hope you're getting a lot out of it and it's providing value to you uh now we're going to switch into the Q a I do want to just mention again any supporting members they have priority with their questions so thank you and again if you want to learn more about supporting the channel and becoming a member we'll put links in the video description as well as active in the chat box off to the side and then just a medical advice disclaimer I think it's unethical for me to give you personalized medical advice without first seeing you as a patient I want the very best for you and so I think it's going to be best for you to get medical advice from your local Healthcare practitioner an eye doctor an optometrist or an ophthalmologist with what we're doing here these questions I am here to provide you education and answer things the best I can so things are betterly uh easier understood and help you on your journey especially with dry eyes so now we are getting some good questions and we're going to see if we can bring those up here I know one question I got earlier this week um from somebody I thought was a really good question was regarding uh meibomian gland probing this is a procedure where a doctor will use this very tiny small metal probe to basically puncture capped glands of the meibomian glands on the eyelids and I had a somebody asked me about that and if it's something that we do or if we have any concerns about it or they specifically asked why many doctors don't do that procedure well the meibomian gland probing has been in the research for at least over a decade that I've been aware of because I had a professor who was doing some research when I was in school and the biggest concern not only is that the the probing the actual probe itself um does does cost a little bit and getting it something that small is a little difficult so it can be a little expensive but mostly because it's just not good amounts of research and doctors have concerns that it's kind of like popping a pimple if you have a pimple on your face and you Lance it the tissue heals and scars can form and so doctors are concerned that by doing a puncture on the meibomian glands it could cause scar formation and then you basically killed the meibomian gland and so there is some concern of that however I know more research has been coming out and I've been digging it's actually sitting on a tab on my my computer here off to the side so I'll see if I can read more into it and maybe we'll do a whole video for the channel about my bromine gland probing and what that looks like so first off uh I do see um Charisma SK asking as a member thank you again for your support that you have Cornell erosion after PRK is it because of dry eyes corneal erosions can be caused by a lot of things I think dry eye can be a component to causing some level of erosion but erosions are usually either due to trauma if somebody has injured their eye like a tree branch hit them is a classic example or they get poked in the eye by maybe a small child if you have a coronal abrasion that the healing surface sometimes doesn't heal perfectly and so that when you blink and there's dryness then that tissue can kind of come loose like a loose scab and then you're going to feel that recurrent carnal erosion it can be really painful the other thing that can cause that is a condition called anterior basement membrane dystrophy uh and that has a part of the cornea that doesn't grow smooth uh some people will develop this usually just genetically and we notice it more often later as people get older but then because that surface is irregular like the surface the coordinate should be glass smooth like glass and it's the surface grows bumpy and irregular then the tissue becomes loose and it's more likely to form an erosion and so uh one one key component to managing erosions is keeping the eyes well lubricated but there's a lot of different treatments for Recon recurrent coronal erosions and hopefully your doctor in your area can help manage that I know our Clinic we often do a multi kind of multi-angled approach I think you could call it because usually when we see an erosion on the surface of the eye we debride the loose tissue we will prescribe some form of an mmp9 inhibitor like doxycycline for example and then then we'll also do an amniotic membrane placement on the eye and that helps we find probably the most help with healing the surface in that condition from the amniotic membrane and then afterward we're putting a bandage contact lens to sort of facilitate and shield the cornea from irritation while the new tissue heals up and that's usually over the course of maybe about about 12 weeks as around 8 to 12 weeks so it's a longer healing time but we get a lot of really good success out of it so thank you uh Gail um I see eyes and aging on there I don't know if that's really a question um maybe of what what you can do for eyes and aging uh ask that question again so I know specifically what you're asking um Vanessa thank you for asking do you think IPL is a good way to improve dry eyes absolutely in fact IPL we just um I've been looking at the research a lot a lot more in the last maybe four or five years I even personally I did a video if you haven't seen on the channel where I went out and saw Dr Laura Perryman or dry eye Master she practices out in Portland and or Seattle and when I was out there I got IPL right after it was first FDA approved with the optilite attachment from a company called luminous then um we just got that same device in our Clinic uh back in November of 2022 and we've had patients who are just absolutely loving it in fact yesterday I had a patient who came back after her full rounds of treatment and she's just never felt her eyes feel as good as they've they feel now she even kind of had the complaint that her eyes were almost um almost too watery a little bit but but also she just looked fantastic so ipl's really been I think a game changer for a lot of people who have access to it the only downside to IPL I would say is that it does sting a bit when you're having the procedure done and the price it's not currently covered by medical insurances at least not where I practice and so um unfortunately it can be a little bit higher price for some people but I think as a procedure we can offer in the clinic people get some of the best bet best bang for their Buck out of it if you could put it that way um getting a lot of good questions guys I'm going to keep trying to walk through some of these things um Gala thank you for getting back to this she asked if uh keeping eyes healthy while aging so for aging eyes to slow things down some of the biggest things you can do one again is eating really healthy a lot of antioxidants a lot of green leafy vegetables lutein and zeaxanthin are really good for the retina in the back of the eye vitamin C diet any sort of diet a vitamin C and even some supplementation research has looked at Vitamin C as being good for slowing down aging of cataracts cataracts inside the eye the solution the aqueous humor inside the eye which is kind of like a clear blood of the eye it surrounds the lens inside the eyeball and it has a high concentration of vitamin C it's one of the highest concentrations of vitamin C in your body and so there is some benefits to again eating diets that have more amounts of higher amounts of vitamin C in them outside of this protecting the eyes sunlight protection I think sunglasses are number one because you not just protect the eyeball but you are protecting the skin around the eyes from sunlight damage and then wide brim hats is a good second uh I've seen at least one publication show that wide brim hats reduced sunlight exposure by about 30 percent so I think combination of the two would be really good and then just seeing your eye doctor on a regular basis because if we can catch disease early we can treat it early and hopefully prevent any future eye disease so those are those are two things that I try to recommend to people so thank you that's really good um I'm gonna go back up a little bit because I know we have a lot of good questions Jay Dixon asks uh is there any option available to home treatments dry drops other or really low cost treatment for dry eye uh and I get that at J because prescription medications and treatments for dry eye can be really expensive I think some of the best things like low cost options uh certainly artificial tears there's many different drops at the store and I've talked about them in a couple of different videos of some that may work better than just like generic ones and even right now unfortunately there's that little scare about certain eye drops that may be contaminated thankfully those have been taken off the shelves as of January in 2023 here but certainly our official tears can be a cost-effective option warm compresses I think is fantastic there's different types of warm compresses we've talked about those in other videos and then I think focusing on diet because you're going to be eating you know you're going to be eating the rest of your life you might as well eat well eat clean try to eat Whole Foods real food all right so I think that those are probably some of the best ways that you can spend your money to help with dryness and then certainly again talk with your doctor see what else they can come up with outside of just you know the expensive medications and drops or perhaps if you ever are going uh there are there are different countries where eye drops or medications for dry eye are less expensive so those are a couple of different options and alternatives [Music] so great um great to hear uh you know Charles Bronson mentions that they've had great success with dry eyes on an animal-based diet uh high on fat I definitely I follow and listen to a lot of the different gurus who talk either either on the more plant-based or even on the animal base and I think it's really fascinating however the vast majority of research on um like animal based or high protein high fat diets even like the ketogenic diet it may be really good early on for your body for losing weight however long term there's concerns around kidney disease and cardiovascular disease and so those are just kind of the things I I think we need more research before I I would feel comfortable recommending that however I know other doctors do recommend that and so I I just encourage everybody to talk to your local physician see what they think ask a dietitian or a licensed nutritionist in your area if you're going to be considering those sort of things but the vast majority of research especially around eye health is more supportive in the in the line of a more plant-based or Mediterranean diet um uh the Gail also asks um like washing your contact lenses in your mouth or putting it back in your eye definitely don't do that do not recommend putting contact lenses in your mouth I know a professional basketball player uh like a few years ago they caught him like a contact lens fell out on the basketball floor picked it up put in his mouth and then put it back in his eye do not do that uh your mouth has so many amounts of bacteria and bacteria water and contact lenses uh they they just love to attach onto that contact lens and then you're basically trapping that bacteria between the contact lens and your eye and if your eye even has a sliver of a defect in the surface that's an open wound for that bacteria to get in and you can get really horrible eye infection so I do not recommend that um so thank you for that um there's so many good questions going on here uh give me a second to kind of make sure I'm not missing everybody missing anybody um LH asks how does stress affect the eyes I recently did a video last fall on stress on the eye uh and definitely definitely encourage you to check that out one of the biggest ones stress can cause a basically a type of blister that builds up in the back of the eye we call it central Cirrus choreo retinopathy and that's when people when you're stressed out you have higher amounts of cortisol that release from your kid from your adrenal glands above your kidneys and that high amount of cortisol whether it be endogenous that your body produces on its own or you're getting it outside of your body in the form of you know steroid creams steroid medications or even nasal sprays uh some like uh some nasal sprays will cause kind of a steroid response and that for some reason causes a fluid to pass from the back of the eye into the retina and it swells up like a blister kind of like you've got a blister on your finger and that throws off your vision makes it really blurry and distorted so that's one condition where stress can affect the eye and then um there's a couple of different ones too um but yeah I definitely suggest you check out that other video because that that can be really helpful I know for a lot of people that come see me in the clinic they can be really stressed out and stress can influence your like symptoms of um like being hyper focused on your dryness of your eye or even hyper focused on like a visual symptom like you're seeing floaters and people are just have high anxiety and they become hyper fixated on this problem and so I do encourage people uh I see a therapist myself and I encourage everybody I think everybody should have some sort of a professional therapist or a coach counselor somebody to talk to other than just your family and friends they're great but a professional is going to talk to you differently and Coach you differently that your friends and your family may not communicate the same way so I do think that's really healthy and something to talk about especially if you're having anxiety depression any other issues like that so thank you um uh Jerusalem also asks if they have soreness like a sharp pain in the inner corner of the eye and how to reduce that uh it's something that you know again I don't know what's going on in your eyes so I can't really um tell you exactly what's going on so I suggest you see a local Healthcare professional so they can examine and give you the appropriate answer but in general um if people do have soreness and pain uh especially in the corners of the eye something that we often see in the clinic is something called angular blepharitis and blepharitis is a kind of a broad generic term for inflammation of the eyelids and this is often due to excess buildup of skin proteins and oils and bacteria that eat those oils and then because the bacteria eat those oils they release a toxin effect where the oils almost turn into soap and literally on the on the on the patient's eye we can see their tear film becoming sudsy we see little bubbles forming because it's literally going through a saponification process and it builds up in the corners of the eye it kind of gets trapped there and then we see higher amounts of inflammation redness dryness building up in the corner and so oftentimes we'll not only prescribe like eye drops and warm compresses but will often prescribe an antibiotic or a steroid combination medication at the same time to help manage that otherwise regular eyelid hygiene and lubrication is always a good habit that we recommend for people so either way still recommend you you see a local doctor and ask them specifically what's going on with that but hopefully that gives you a little bit more insight of what we may be thinking about um so thank you so much Jay for calling that out too um ooh Michael Bowen thank you for asking any cheap solution to keep my eyes shut at night so I did also do a video fairly recently about um about your eyes being open while you sleep or having dry eyes in the early morning because a lot of people do sleep with their eyes slightly cracked open or when your eyelids come together they're not fitting tightly together and so there's a slight Gap and that leaves your eyes exposed to air so if you wake up right away in the morning your eyes are really dry could be the case the options for kind of keeping that most doctors will recommend a lubricating ointment like a nighttime ointment but it'll blur your vision and in the morning your vision will be really kind of gunky so you have to clean your eyelids really well there is the sleep tight sleep right solution which a lot of clinics are starting to turn to because and you can buy this online I think it's like 40 US dollars but it's an eyelid tape that is hypoallergenic and porous that is specifically designed to keep your eyelids closed while you sleep some people use sleep masks I've been trying that for several years the only downside to sleep mask is that your eyes still technically going to be cracked open while you sleep um but it's something again you can kind of look into but those are those are some just good suggestions and again definitely check out that uh that video um yes I see it Michael Michael thank you yeah I seals um they can they can get expensive um but I think they're they're probably well worth the investment especially if it's something that really helps you with your symptoms and your dryness um um thank you I know Holden Ferguson just asked me um about his uh getting prescription glasses um if you can put that in there quick um and I'll try to get to it um because I just don't see it I can't quite search for your question but please put that in one more time I'll look for it um and then procky Verma asked what is the difference between retinal vein occlusion and retinal artery occlusion in terms of treatment and symptoms wow that's a that's a really good question uh not quite in the realm of dry eye but that's okay retinal vein occlusion and artery occlusion so in the eye we have both veins and arteries arteries bring the blood to the eye and the veins drain the blood from the eye traditionally vein occlusions occur usually due to some form of atherosclerosis high blood pressure related is a common part of that um but it can occur due to other other causes and then artery occlusions usually are due to some sort of like vascular occlusion event whether it be from a like a chunk of art like a chunk of plaque gets stuck in the artery or um in cases where I'm always concerned about I'm always looking at medications some medications can cause artery occlusions as well um one of the bigger ones is a lot we kind of learn in school is especially for young women we don't see other inclusions very often thankfully but when people do get artery occlusions uh like young women we have to look for if they're taking a lot of oral contraceptives especially older oral contraceptives or multiple they're at higher risk of artery occlusions as far as treatment the biggest thing is when you see an eye doctor we have to observe to make sure that there's not a risk of either swelling of the retina in the back of the eye which we usually see In Vein occlusions where bleeding occurs and the cause of the retina to swell so we often have to look for that because if we do catch it early we have to send it for proper injections of a medication inside the eye what's called anti-vegef but that decreases the swelling then we have to look for the ischemia that's occurring because if you have a vein inclusion in the back of the eye for example then blood isn't getting to the retinal tissues that it needs and so it's starved of nutrients and oxygen and then you have ischemia and with higher amounts of ischemia you're a much higher risk of new blood vessel forming inside the eye and our patients are at higher risk of developing a severe form of glaucoma and so those are big things that your doctor needs to kind of watch for so likely if you're having either vein occlusions or artery occlusions you're going to be seeing your doctor at least every month if not more depending on on the case and the severity uh they're going to be doing a couple of different procedures to watch for glaucoma as well as possible either recommend injections inside the eye or even laser treatments or start you on medications to help manage glaucoma so there's a lot going on there but vein occlusions and other inclusions are also beginning to be classified in the same realm of having a stroke and so a lot of kind of the protocols for managing this also includes having patients referred for proper workup as like a stroke work up as well as seeing their family doctor to get things managed for their high blood pressure cholesterol diabetes all of that that's a pretty in those are really high level um those are pretty severe things that doctors get trained in and and I when I was doing my residency at the VA is something I would see on like a weekly basis so it's a huge thing but thank you um I want to get back to Holden Ferguson because he's been asking and thank you so much for your patience uh he said it recently got a prescription for his glasses that should come in two months that's a long time but hopefully they work great uh and you're nearsighted uh would you considered giving you some tips um uh well as as far as tips for the glasses the biggest thing is when you get the glasses I do recommend always having a professionally adjusted uh depending on where you're looking through the lenses uh if they're sitting a little crooked and usually when you first get them nothing ever sits quite right because most people's ears aren't perfectly symmetrical and one's always a little bit higher than the other so having them professionally adjusted so you're looking through the right part of the lens and that's always going to be good uh if you did get an anti-reflective on your lenses which I hopefully you did because that helps usually anti-reflective is great because it improves the clarity of your vision through the lenses but they also tend to increase the smudginess like they attract dust and oils from your skin and so do clean your glasses on a regular basis is when they're getting dirty the best way I've ever found to clean glasses especially when they're smudged up like that is using a single dab of dish soap under warm water and then using an appropriate microfiber lens cloth and so again I even have another some fun video sharing tips on that too so thank you so much for that um uh and hopefully just those two tips are going to bring you a lot of success uh also if your glasses are sliding down anything like that a small adjustment in your glasses sliding down your nose uh is going to be a significant factor if you're seeing clearly so make sure again everything's nice adjusted and comfortable uh now I think what we're going to do is I'm going to answer this one last question here from Adnan Sami uh who's asked if there's any treatment for keratoconus any new treatments really right now the newest treatments that I've been following are with a surgeon here in the United States that I've been I had the pleasure of working with and that's from uh Dr lobenoff at his Clinic called OVO in the Twin Cities here in Minnesota and he's been doing a lot of treatments in terms of not just Cornell cross-linking which stops the progression of the of the disease but he even has patented new tools and Technologies to do it faster because in the original days uh of doing kernel cross linking it would take at least almost 30 minutes to an hour for that procedure to be done and it's a long procedure and now they're doing it they can potentially do it in like 10 minutes or less but then they also can do it if you're a good candidate for it in conjunction with PRK or a form of refractive surgery similar to Lasik and so they combine the two and so that's kind of the newest technology looking in that direction so thank you for that question um just wanted to kind of say thank you to everybody who's in the chat and asking amazing questions I know we could probably do an entire hour's worth of just live q a and maybe we'll be able to do that especially for our members who have so many good questions thank you again for everybody who's watching I hope you got a lot of value out of this keep an eye on it for the next videos coming out especially on Omega-3s and dry

Channel: Doctor Eye Health

Views: 225,257

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Id: v_QZj4FmJRA

Length: 44min 7sec (2647 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 30 2023