If you suffer from dry eyes, there is no reason for you to have to put up with this. Dry eyes can also be dangerous for your eyes because this can cause infections, as well as scarring. If you do get scars on your eyes, this will cause vision loss. Fortunately, you have many treatment options available that can take care of this problem, three of which are listed below.
1. Eye Drops
If you do not have a severe case of dry eyes, your eye doctor may suggest eye drops, which is also called artificial tears. You can find many different types of eye drops on the market, but this can become very confusing. Because of this ask for your eye doctor's recommendation.
Artificial tears are made with ingredients that will soothe your eyes immediately and help them become lubricated. There is also artificial eye drops that are made with a type of thick gel. This type does last longer because it stays in your eyes longer. You do have to consider, however, that when you first put these eye drops, your eyes will be blurry for a few minutes until the gel spreads over your eyes. Because of this, you may want to use the regular eye drops during the day and the gel eye drops at night.
Your eye doctor may choose to prescribe you some eye drops if they do not think over the counter eye drops will work well for you.
2. Lacrimal Plugs
If eye drops do not work well for you, your eye doctor may suggest lacrimal plugs. This treatment helps your eyes stay moist much longer. The lacrimal plug is a small device that the eye doctor inserts into your tear drainage ducts in the corner of your lower and upper eyelids. Once the device is inserted tears will not drain from your eyes but instead stays on the surface of your eyes instead.
If your eyes water too much after this procedure, the eye surgeon will likely remove one or more of the lacrimal plugs to cause less watering.
3. Gland Expression
Many people that have dry eyes do not have as much oil, also known as meibum, secreting from the glands in their eyes. In some cases, the opening of these glands can get clogged up. When this happens, the tears that come from your eyes evaporates quickly leading to dry eyes.
Your eye doctor can treat this problem by doing a procedure known as gland expression. The eye doctor first places warm compresses on your eyes. This will help loosen up the clog. Once this is done the doctor will use a special device to remove the clogs from the glands. These clogs are generally made of meibum that has hardened over time.
Talk with your eye doctor about this information and they can go over with you in much more detail.
