Living with Dry Eyes (what has helped me)

thank you to Asus and the Asus Zenbook 14 flip OLED for sponsoring this video and helping us make eye health education free and accessible to all so today I want to talk to you about dry eye syndrome sharing my own experiences as somebody who suffered from dry eye since I was a teenager but also from the perspective of an eye doctor and YouTube Creator who's constantly digging into the research and treating patients in the clinic for the disease as I have learned a lot of tips and tools along the way that have really helped me out and I want to share them with you because I think it could also help you with your dry eyes now I myself first experienced dry eye again starting my teenage years mainly because I was wearing contacts all the time and then I would stay up late either doing homework assignments or maybe playing video games with friends on the weekend and with that my eyes were open all of the time leaving my contact lenses to dry out which then causes irritation and redness as the contact lens kind of suction onto the eye in fact sometimes my eyes were so red that either at school or at work some people would ask me if I had either pink eye or some other type of eye infection and then even on really bad days if I especially if I was staring at like a computer screen my eyes would start to reflex tear meaning that the surface of the eye was so dry my body was trying to produce more tears to try and correct that and then it would look like I'm almost like crying or something like that and with this High variability of tear production you know my vision would start to fluctuate and even go blurry and honestly this sort of thing even still happens to me in the clinic where I have to sometimes pull back from examining a patient just to Blink my eyes a few times to recoat my contact lenses so I can start to see clearly again and sometimes I even have to take out my contact lenses and switch back to glasses or just take a break just to close my eyes and give my eyes a little bit of a rest now to explain it easily dry eye syndrome is a condition where either you don't produce enough tears on the eye or even more frequently what I see is people produce enough tears but their tears evaporate rate way too quickly or it's a combination of the two and almost all of my patients who have dry eye syndrome do experience some form of grittiness sandiness foreign body sensation redness irritation or light sensitivity even and some people even experience kind of a thick mucus developing on the eyes with kind of swollen eyelids and then again some people even experience fluctuating and blurred vision because of the dryness now dry eye can be caused by many factors of course including just things like age and hormone changes but also medications systemic diseases and autoimmune conditions different environmental factors and lifestyle choices even for myself contact lenses contact lenses are known to dry out the eye as well but probably the biggest and most frequent cause of dry eye syndrome that I see in the clinic in my patients but also in my own dry eye has to do with tear film evaporation mostly due to what is called meibomian gland dysfunction which I know we've talked about in this channel quite a bit before but to explain it simply it's where these oil glands in your eyelids they're supposed to produce a little bit of a thin oil that mixes with your tears to prevent them from evaporating but if these glands either stop producing good quality oils or if the glands has stopped producing altogether because these glands can atrophy and die off then again your tear film just evaporates almost instantly and many factors May contribute to these glands not working as well anything from allergies to your diet from acne medications to infections and even prolonged computer screen use is believed to be a cause now for me personally I know a lot of my dry eye stems from both contact lens wear but also from excessive computer screen use as research has shown that when we are on the computer we stare at the screen so intensively that our blink rate drops to about 25 percent of what it normally would be in just regular conversation the harsh reality is that in our modern world computer screens are not going to be going anywhere so thankfully we do have a lot of cool tech companies like Asus whose instantly innovating to make things a lot easier for us and more comfortable such as with the new Asus Zenbook 14 flip I have here this has the 360 Ergo lift hinge which allows me to put it into different kind of like tablet mode where I can work on either reading research or working on YouTube videos a lot easier or even in a tent mode so I can either watch videos or lectures a lot more comfortably so instead of just being hunched over and straining on the computer screen all the time I can now change it into different positions and be a lot more comfortable now as far as treating my own dry eyes and some things that I've personally had success with include doing warm compresses every day for at least 10 minutes at a time this heats up any of the trapped oils in my oil glands and allows them to release and flow better I've also had more recently a really good success taking omega-3 supplements which I did several videos on even documenting my own experience as I took them for at least 90 days and I did a lot of research to figure out different brands and dosages for that also I've just learned to be really my mindful of my environment as I live here in Minnesota where the winters can get extremely long and cold and with that our furnaces turn on and the humidity drops really low when you're indoors and so having a humidifier oftentimes here in the office or even in my bedroom has helped me out quite a bit and then of course here in the warmer Seasons I love to be outside as much as I can and so I often am now wearing sunglasses basically all the time to protect my eyes from wind and allergens things like that in fact in regards to extreme temperatures it's rather convenient that the Asus Zenbook flip I have here was specifically designed to withstand extreme conditions in fact it was U.S military tested to withstand high humidity as well as extreme temperatures both hot and cold where a lot of my other devices tend to shut down in high heat now I do still occasionally use artificial tear eye drops to help with my dry eye symptoms and I've covered a lot of different dry eye Brands here on this channel and you can check those out if you want to learn more but for me first personally I do try to always use preservative free eye drops which I either carry with me in my pant pocket or maybe in my backpack for example and outside of just these conservative treatments these kind of at-home lifestyle treatments that have helped me with dry eye I've also had good success with some in-office therapies at our own eye clinics first of which is thermal pulsation there's a couple different brands that do this but it's a process of heating up the oil glands from both inside and out and then there's a manual expression that expresses any of the clogged oil glands within the eyelid and then there's a procedure called IPL I've had good success with this stands for intense pulse light it is a therapy that helps reduce inflammation of the eyelids and again helps with evaporative dry eye and honestly I think in terms of IPL since that was approved for dry eye that is the one procedure that has not only had a better long lasting effect for my own dry eye symptoms but also for a lot of my patients and as far as medications go I've also personally done really well with a nasal spray that's now available for dry eye now of course in the eye clinic with all the different patients that I've managed over the years A lot of people do find success with using prescription medications for dry eye for both short and long-term symptoms however I always think it's important to say this that there is no Silver Bullet to treat dry eye because everybody's dry eye can be caused by a combination of different factors and can get really complex so some people maybe need a variety of treatments on top of just kind of the lifestyle factors things that I've mentioned before but some extra tips and tools that I would recommend for anybody that's experiencing dryness with their eyes would be number one make sure you do talk to a local eye care professional so that they can really give you the insights if it even is dry eye maybe your symptoms are a combination of both dryness or allergies or maybe your eyelids aren't closing all the way and you're having exposure issues also number two would be to try and seek out a dry eye specialist if you have one in your area because different eye clinics may not have all the same diagnostic tools or even the same treatments that they can offer you that oftentimes a dry eye specialist can offer and number three is to be more mindful when you are on a computer and try to remember to blink your eyes a little bit more because studies again show that we just tend to blink our eyes so much less when we are staring at computer screens I know I am pretty light sensitive and so to help with my eye strain I do like to turn down the brightness on my computer screen and thankfully again the Asus Zenbook OLED screen here also has 100 DCI P3 color gamut accuracy so even with a lower brightness levels I still get accurate colors when I'm working on YouTube content it also has crazy good anti-glare reducing 90 percent of Reflections which helps improve my eye comfort and reduces distractions which I feel helps me relax more while I'm working and helps me blink more naturally now overall I know I feel pretty lucky that a lot of my dry eye has responded to this conservative therapies where in contrast I have a lot of pace to the clinic who they don't and they have to rely more heavily on in-office procedures and sometimes multiple prescription medications to get things under control but overall I feel really thankful and have a lot of gratitude that we're alive at this time because we have so much great Innovation and new research coming out all the time which is helping us really manage dry eye and help us live still full and productive lives now again and as always with dry eye it's very complex and there's a lot of treatments out there for dry eye that go well beyond what we've just shortly mentioned here so I do other videos on different treatments of dry eye and I'll put video links in the description below so you can learn a little bit more but also with a link so you can check out the Asus Zenbook 14 flip OLED here with its 14 inch 2.8 K 90 Hertz OLED display and I want to say thanks again to Asus for sponsoring this video and helping us with our mission of making eye health education free and accessible and as always if you have any other questions about red eyes dry eyes or really any eye health condition let us know in the comments section and I look forward to seeing you in the next video see ya foreign [Music]

Channel: Doctor Eye Health

Views: 26,028

Keywords: dry eye, dry eyes, dry eye treatment, dry eye syndrome, living with dry eyes, dry eye experience, what causes dry eyes, dry eyes treatment, dry eye treatments, dry eyes treatments, how to treat dry eyes, dryeye treatment, eye dryness, dry eye disease, dry eye disease treatment, dry eye syndrome treatment, tips for dry eyes, dry eye tips, dry red eyes, doctor eye health, dr eye health

Id: whrgkQKcZXY

Length: 10min 15sec (615 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 05 2023