Dry Eye Relief: Artificial Tears or Heated Therapeutic Eye Mask?

Dry eye is a condition resulting from allergies or an irregularity in the eyes. It causes the eyes to produce low-quality or quantity tears. These tears cannot provide enough lubrication and hydration for your eyes.

 

Importance of Tears

Tears have three layers that work together to protect and nourish the cornea. The layers are mucus, oil, and water, and allow for clear vision as well as help to maintain the health of the cornea. The water layer hydrates the eye, while the mucus layer helps spread tears uniformly over the cornea. The oil layer covers it all, preventing the evaporation of the water.

 

Tears wash away foreign matter from your eyes, keeping them clear of debris, dust, and bacteria. The deficiency of good tears results in unhealthy eyes that can harbor bacteria and infection.

 

Causes of Dry Eye

There are two major types of dry eye. It can be due to aqueous deficiency or evaporative dry eye. Dry eye due to aqueous deficiency results from a low quantity of tears. It may point to an autoimmune disorder that over time destroys the lacrimal glands.

 

On the other hand, evaporative dry eye results from low-quality tears. The tears are of low quality due to a dysfunction in the meibomian glands. The dysfunction is due to a blockage in the meibomian glands. Between the two, meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD) is the more common cause of dry eye.

 

Treatment and Relief

Treatment and relief depend on the type of dry eye. You can use artificial tears or a heated therapeutic eye mask to relieve the symptoms. Artificial tears are better for aqueous deficiency, while heated-therapeutic eye masks are better for evaporative dry eye.

 

Artificial Tears

These are your go-to eye drops, and they try to mimic natural tears. They hydrate and keep the surface of your eyes moist. Different brands use different ingredients, some of which can help heal your cornea. Other brands have more oil to help with tears that dry too quickly.

 

However, the preservatives in the eye drops make dry eyes worse for some people. The preservatives are to keep bacteria from growing in the bottles. The people who react to these artificial tears are allergic to preservatives.

 

You thus need to avoid artificial tears that contain preservatives if they make your dry eye more severe. If you use artificial tears more than four times a day, they could be harming you more than helping. It could also mean that tears may be evaporating too fast, and you may need alternative relief.

 

Heated Therapeutic Eye Mask

Warm compresses can be messy and may cool too fast. This is where eye masks come in handy. They can be self-heating, or you can heat them in the microwave. Microwave-heated eye masks give relief for about 10 to 15 minutes and are more effective than warm compresses.

 

Self-heating eye masks do so on exposure to air. They have pouches where you can put warming wafers. Place the eye mask over your eye, and the warming wafers will heat upon exposure to air. Using an eye mask is ideal for the evaporative dry eye where there is a blockage of the meibomian glands. When you place it on your eyes three or four times a day, it unblocks the oil glands and keeps them flowing.


 

For more on types of dry eye relief, contact Brandon Eyes at our offices in Madison or Middleton, Wisconsin. You can call (608) 833-0301 or (608) 833-7256 today to schedule an appointment.