Our eyes help us experience every special moment in our lives. Whether we’re happy or sad our eyes always contain tears. Tears keep our eyes healthy, lubricated and prevent any damage towards them.
Tears are made up of mucus, water, and oil that help maintain your eyes moist. The oil part of the tear helps keep your eyes lubricated and prevent the tears from evaporating. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case for some people. Some people can’t make enough oil or will make too much of it causing the eyes to dry up quickly. Making too little or too much oil causes the tears to evaporate quickly and results in dry eyes.
You can determine if you suffer from dry eyes by various symptoms. Here are 3 signs to help you determine if you have dry eyes.
Gritty or burning feeling
We’ve all experienced the frustration of a small particle going into our eyes making us quickly proceed to wash out the particle and get rid of it. However, when you suffer from dry eyes you’ll continuously feel like you have a sand-like particle in your eye, even if you don’t. Because of this feeling, you’ll rub your eyes trying to get rid of whatever is in your eye, but in turn, only make it worse. The gritty feeling eventually creates a stinging and burning sensation that causes painful irritation to your eyes.
Excessive watering
When a particle goes into our eyes, our eyes’ reflex is to make more tears to help flush out the particle. Dry eyes will give the sensation that there’s a particle inside your eye even when there isn’t. So, when your eyes become irritated this causes your eyes to continuously create excessive amounts of tears. Since our eyes can’t handle many tears at once, most of the tears that are being created will eventually begin to go over our eyelids causing your eyes to overflow with tears and become dry again.
Blurred vision or eye fatigue
Looking at your computer or phone screen for long periods can be damaging to your eyes as well. Looking at a screen for too long without blinking or taking any breaks will cause eye fatigue. This also happens when driving for long periods. You’ll keep looking at the road for a long time without any breaks that you’ll forget to blink. Eye fatigue will sometimes cause blurred vision that eventually leads to dry eyes. Not blinking enough doesn’t allow the right amounts of tears to be produced in your eyes to keep them lubricated.
This month is Dry Eye Awareness Month to help spot and prevent the signs of dry eyes. There are many ways to prevent and get treatment for dry eyes. Some as simple as blinking and taking a break from your screen will help a long way.
To learn more and schedule an appointment with one of our eye doctors at Valley Eye Care Center, call us at 602-955-2700 or book your appointment online.
