Chronic Dry Eyes: Is It a Real Thing? Eye Care Questions Answered
There has been a lot of talk about a condition called "chronic dry eyes" on TV lately. The "condition" promotes several eye drops and medications which supposedly fix your dry eye problem. However, eye care already has a lot of eye drops meant to moisturize your eyes, so what is this condition and what should you know about it? Furthermore, what eye drops can you use, if the condition exists and if you actually suffer from it? This and more follows.
Chronic Dry Eye and Halitosis
Halitosis was once a word made up by dentists to describe general bad breath. That is all it really meant until someone decided that it meant chronic bad breath. Now you have dry eyes, and you have chronic dry eyes, which begs the question in regards to what the difference is, if any.
Well, there is a difference, which means that chronic dry eyes is a real condition. Chronic dry eyes means that you have a major medical problem with producing tears. Tears, whether you cry or not, are responsible for lubricating the eyeballs in the sockets and keeping them most. Otherwise your eyes would stick rather than roll around, and eventually shrivel and sink into your head. The first symptom is extreme itchiness, for which some drops provide relief.
Drops for the Problem
You should always try over-the-counter drops for eyes first. Most of these can lubricate your eyes well, and because they are pH-balanced for eyes, they will not cause more irritation. If you continue to feel irritation in your eyes even after you have used these OTC eye care products, you will need to see an ophthalmologist. He or she can perform certain tests to see if your eyes have the ability to tear up, and if they produce an adequate and/or expected amount of tears in response to the test stimuli.
If you indeed have a medical condition that leaves your eyes constantly dry and itchy, you need to produce more tears. That is hard to do when your eyes refuse to comply. Then your ophthalmologist can prescribe a couple different types of medicated drops that will moisturize your eyes while getting them to lubricate themselves. These are the types of drops you want and need to care for a true medical condition involving your eyes and tear ducts. Additionally, these drops only need to be used a couple times a day, at most, versus OTC drops that you may have been using much more frequently.
For more information about chronic dry eye and how to treat it, talk to an ophthalmologist like those at West Bay Eye.