is it possible for a pillow to help with dry eyes hey howdy everybody I feel like I'm constantly on
the search for looking for either new techniques treatments or home remedies to help people with
their dry eyes and recently the people at sleep and glow emailed me asking if I wanted to try
their pillow now to be honest I pretty much ignored the email at first because it doesn't
really line up with this channel but as I got looking into it their design of the pillow made
me wonder if it could potentially help people with dry eyes now their pillows are mainly designed
and marketed for those people that want to reduce contact of their skin to the pillow mainly around
the eyes and the eyelid to reduce wrinkles reduce puffiness and to help with overall sleep posture
so I actually emailed them back asking them if they think the pillow would help with dry
eyes and they were completely honest saying that there's not really any research that has been done
to show that it could but they said if I wanted to test it out then it might be worth a shot so
this video is a pure test experiment of mine to see if it would help with the dryad treatments
at night this video is not sponsored by them at all and so let's get into it so they actually
sent out two of their different design pillows that I could test out and I've been testing them
out for a couple weeks and here's what I found now before we get into it this potentially can
help those people with eye dryness specifically at night time whether they're sleeping or if
they wake up with dry eyes and this could be caused for multiple different reasons one can
be something called lagophthalmos where you kind of lose the eyes ability to close and shut all
the way either from a muscle or a nerve issue and then specifically at night people can have what's
called nocturnal lagophthalmos where they go to sleep and their eyelids don't close all the way
which leaves their tear film to evaporate and leaves the surface of the eye just exposed to
the air which can cause severe dryness another possibility is something called floppy eyelid
syndrome where people lose their elastin that's in their eyelid so their eyelid gets really floppy
really loose and so sometimes when they go to bed and they're laying on their side the pillow might
pull up their eyelid even to the point where it might flip the eyelid up inside out and the
inner part of the eyelid is actually rubbing on the pillow or the actual eyeball is touching the
pillow and as you can imagine can definitely cause severe dryness that way as well and one
more common issue that might affect more people is that they just don't have an adequate eyelid
seal meaning their eyelids don't seal completely and you can kind of think of this as an overbite
a mouth overbite where your teeth kind of come out a little bit and and leave a gap there the eyelids
can possibly do the same thing where the eyelid won't seal completely with the bottom eyelid
but will have almost an overbite leaving that Gap there that can cause your eye to dry out and there
are many other causes and issues that are related to all that that I plan on going more in depth in
another video now like I said all this can lead to severe dryness or something called exposure
keratopathy where you can actually get these dry patches right on the bottom third of the eye and
we actually see this in the clinic all the time and sometimes that's a dead giveaway if you might
be sleeping with your eyes slightly open or have a little Gap there that's drying the bottom portion
of the eye out and the main treatments that a lot of doctors have been recommending usually involve
eye drops gel or ointments that you can put in right before you go to bed to kind of give you an
extra layer of protection on that eye to keep it from drying out and then there's actually types of
eyelid tape where you can actually tape the eyelid down to create that adequate seal there's actually
a product called sleep tight sleep right that I actually did a full video review on that you
can check out I'll put it in the description but I actually liked that and I think it did work really
well or there's the home remedy hack that you can use the Glad pressing seal you can actually put
it right on your eyelid same principle create that adequate seal it can be kind of irritating to the
eyelid skin it really sticks on there I've tried it I didn't really like it but it can work and
these are all things that I've tried myself with varying success they're kind of frustrating to use
though the drops and gels can help but I feel like almost doesn't give enough protection or doesn't
last as long sometimes I'll still wake up with dry eyes or a lot of my patients will as well and the
moisture chamber goggles can work but if you're like me and you're a side sleeper then you're a
stomach sleeper back sleeper and you're constantly moving around the moisture chamber goggles just
could never stay on as much as I wanted it to sometimes I'd wake up and the goggles would be
completely off or shifted or be leaving an indent or a mark and be uncomfortable and so I've never
really liked moisture chamber goggles they can help when they do work if I just don't move all
night and the eyelid tape can actually work work as well it actually worked for me really well but
there were definitely nights where when I shifted it has a little tab on there that you can use to
peel the tape off but sometimes that would move or shift or sometimes it would come undone just
because I was moving around and that pillow was taking the the tape off and so it can work it
just is frustrating it's just frustrating to do treatments at night now this is the design that
I actually tried first this is their Omnia pillow I usually tend to fall asleep on my side but as
you can see here there little cutout it's on this side and the other side but it allows you to kind
of lay down without creating contact from the pillow to your skin around the eye so there's
not any pulling on the eyelid or the skin around the eyelid and and so it actually helps quite a
bit now I will say there was definitely some getting used to sleeping on this pillow I have
a nice purple pillow that I tend to sleep with and I love it and so when I was testing this out I uh
didn't like it at first just because I was used to my purple pillow but once I got into it and
got used to it and sleeping on my side with it um actually liked it so I tried all those treatments
I tried moisture chamber goggles uh worked way better with his pillow uh especially if I fell
asleep on my side like that I found that there were a lot more mornings where the moisture Cham
goggles were actually still in place now there were some uh nights that it's still because I tend
to move around and sometimes i' would sink into it that I would still kind of move the moisture
chamber goggles but it was way better way better than a normal pillow for sure and that goes the
same for the sleep tight sleep right eyelid tape I tried that as well same thing worked way better
with this pillow now they actually sent me another pillow to promote sleeping on your back and this
is actually the one that I thought worked even better now like I said a lot of times I am a
back sleeper side sleeper stomach sleeper I switch but this kind of helped keep me on my back I don't
know how it did it but maybe my head was going to turn and and so just kind of keep the rest of my
body from turning over I don't know but this one I actually found the most success with using the
dry eye treatment specifically the moisture chamber goggles because this kind of blocked
my head from going side to side definitely had a better success there but also better
success with the eyelid tape as well and so if you're looking into this this might be one to
get the one that actually you sleep on your back with now these pillows are considered a premium
pillow with a premium device so just keep that in mind if you want to look into them but they
definitely have high reviews a lot of doctors recommend them orthopedic surgeons recommend
them Dr Dray here on YouTube the dermatologist actually recommends them and so they really are
well designed if you're looking into it so for me I actually think that these pillows actually could
be beneficial they could make dry treatments more efficient now where would I rank them as far as a
need for for a dry eye treatment or a dry eye help well if you're someone that wants to look
into a pillow maybe to reduce wrinkles reduce puffiness and swelling around the eyelids maybe
promote back sleeping or that sleep posture and you have dry eyes specifically at night
or when you wake up in the morning then I would definitely look into this pillow cuz it could make
the dry treatments more efficient I hope that this helps let me know if it did stay focused