If you suffer from chronic dry eyes, you know that it’s more than just irritating. It can feel like you have sandpaper on your lids, making life miserable. Suddenly, daylight is your enemy and you find it hard to look at your computer or TV screen. You are not alone. An estimated 30 million Americans suffer from dry eye symptoms.
“It’s becoming one of the bigger problems affecting eyesight,” says Dr. Joseph Dolezal of Innovations in EyeCare. “If your tear film isn’t thick enough to do the job, than the oil and mucus that make up the other parts of the tear film start to sludge together so that you are always blinking, trying to clear it up.” This constant blinking is what causes the tear problem.”
What Is Dry Eye?
Simply put, dry eye is when your body is not producing enough tears to lubricate and nourish your eyes. When the tear film is reduced, you have dry eyelids rubbing on dry eyes which causes inflammation. This in turn causes swelling, blurred vision and increased light sensitivity.
Your tear film is important and helps keep things out. When it’s too dry to do this, other problems can occur. For example, the tear film is your barrier to allergies and external irritants. If it’s doing its job you will get less infections and less eye allergy symptoms. Dr. Dolezal explains that when you have dry eye, you may get more infections and your allergies may bother you more than they had previously, because your tear film isn’t working properly. “You may have had allergies at a low level before and now they are twice as bad,” he says. “And most people don’t realize it’s because of dry eyes.”
Help For Dry Eye Suffers
Dr. Dolezal has been an optometrist for over 35 years. Back when he first started, there wasn’t much they could do to help those suffering from dry eyes. “We could give them artificial tears but those have to be constantly applied to the eyes all day long,” he says.
It wasn’t until 2003 when the first prescription came out to treat dry eye. RESTASIS was an answered prayer for many sufferers. It works by cleaning out the plugged up lacrimal gland. “When you have low level arthritis, Sjogren’s syndrome and hormonal changes, particularly in women, your immune system changes and it actually blocks up your lacrimal gland with white blood cells looking for inflammation,” Dr. Dolezal says. RESTASIS helps clean out those white blood cells, allowing for more secretion.
When it first came out, Dr. Dolezal prescribed RESTASIS to a patient and it helped her immensely. “That patient’s story has stayed in mind these past ten years because she was then able to bring her mother in who had also been suffering from dry eyes, and we were able to help her too,” he says. “It was fun to treat mother and daughter and help them both see better.”
It can take months for this drug to work, but it does help. Just last week, two patients of Dr. Dolezal came into the clinic for their check-up. Last year, they came in because their eyes were so dry they were unable to wear contact lenses – they would just fall out. Anyone who is used to contacts and has had to switch back to glasses knows how annoying and even hindering this can be. “Now, a year into their RESTATIS, their tear volume is immensely better and they can wear contacts again,” Dr. Dolezal says.
And, you don’t have to be on RESTASIS forever, just long enough to unclog the gland and increase tear volume. You can go back on it if the symptoms return.
In 2016 a new drug came out called Xiidra. It’s the first dry eye drug since RESTASIS. Dr. Dolezal says it’s very exciting because it addresses the cause of dry eye that RESTASIS does not. It works by reducing the inflammation of the eye tissues. When the inflammation comes down, the tear film works better. “It stimulates tear glands in the eye lid (not the lacrimal gland) and it works quicker than RESTASIS – in as little as three to five weeks,” he says. But, because it’s new, it’s more expensive.
“The good news for patients is that now there is competition, so we should see prices start to go down,” Dr. Dolezal says. “It’s really exciting. Now we have more than one way to treat dry eye, it’s something we never had before. It’s so much fun to have patients come back and see how much tear film they have now. It’s fun to have patients feeling like their eyes are better. So many things change as we age and we can’t change them back. This is something we can fix.”
Patients whose dry eyes have been healed with these medications have a new outlook on life. “Now you can stare at your computer longer,” Dr. Dolezal says. “You can go for a walk on the beach and not have the wind evaporate your tears in five seconds. It lets you live. We have patients tell us it gives them more control of their lives and we love that.”
For more information about dry eye or to schedule an appointment, visit the Innovations in EyeCare’s website or call 360-736-7385.
Factors That Make You More Prone to Dry Eye
- Being over 50-years-old. Hormone levels change and effect the lacrimal gland.
- Being female. Females have a higher occurrence of dry eye symptoms.
- Antihistamine use.
- Wearing Contact Lenses. Dirty lenses cause the eye to use the tear film to wet the contact, rather than clean the eye itself.
- Increased screen time. The more you stare at a screen, the less you blink and the dryer your eyes get.
- Lasik eye surgery. This damages some of the nerves. It doesn’t bother the eye, but you have less reflexive tearing. It takes years to regrow the nerves, so many experience dry eye after Lasik.
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