have you noticed a strange red or yellow spot on the white part of your eye
in this video we're going to talk about what that is why you have it
and what you can do about it let's focus in
hey howdy everybody i'm dr neal guymon, dr eyeguy
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for any additional helpful links now let's focus on that weird spot on
your eyeball now the name for the spot that i'm
talking about is almost as weird as it looks it's called
a pinguecula a pinguecula is a yellowish growth
from the thickening of the conjunctiva on the surface of the white part of your
eye now the most common place that people get a pinguecula is on the white
part of the eye on towards the nose side nasally you can
also get it temporarily on the side where your ear
is as well the most common place is towards the
nose though you'll usually see it right next to the cornea or if you look
at the color part of you that eye the iris
right next to it on the white part of the eye the sclera you'll see this
pinguecula growing on the surface or the conjuctive of the eye now when i say the
word growth that sounds horrifying but don't worry it's benign it's not
cancerous and it's a very common thing that i see in the
clinic very very very common now another common thing
will happen is some people won't even notice that they have it until they tend
to look at that part of your eye or they're close enough in the mirror
that they see it and it worries them because they think that spot just came
out of nowhere and so they'll call into the clinic and
come in and see to make sure that everything's okay
but more than likely they've had it for a while and just barely
noticed that it was there now like i said you can get on the white parts of
the eyes it's usually the part of the white part of the eye that's exposed
meaning the eyelids not covering them you can also get them on both eyes i
have one on the nasal side of my right eye that's
been there for years uh just my third eyeball just
sitting right there on the white part of my eye
now a lot of people ask me why in the world do we get this pinguecula now the
most common link is actually uv exposure so exposure to the sunlight
in fact a lot of people use the term surfer's eye
because surfers tend to get it especially if they're not wearing
sunglasses they're out surfing a lot of uv exposure will cause this
growth to happen now i live up here in idaho not a lot of surfers around in
idaho and so i actually see quite commonly in farmers now another
thing that's linked to the towards this pinguecula
other than uv exposure is dry dusty climates
now usually when you get a farmer that's been farming their whole life they
haven't been wearing sunglasses they're out in the dusty
dry environment they tend to get a pinguecula
and usually it's a slow growth over time sometimes i use the analogy in clinic
it's kind of like getting a callous you know i can get a callus on your
on your hand it's almost like the eyes version of a callus now they can get
pretty scary in fact if they grow far enough onto the cornea meaning
it's starting to cover the color part of the the eye the iris
it actually changes its name it's called a pterygium
at that point and if you're super unlucky sometimes
that perigeum will grow over the center of your pupil actually
starting to affect the vision and usually at that point uh it's
driving the person crazy and usually they're on their way
to get surgery to get that taken off so it gets it out of the way of their
vision hey if you're getting value out of this
video be sure to hit that like button down below sometimes the pinguecula
itself can be very beefy irritated uh have a lot of
veins inflamed and will bug the eye quite a bit in fact
the eyelids will try and blink over this pinguecula
and the ping and the eyelids rub onto the pinguecula causing it to be
irritated and inflamed and then you'll see it get red and it'll
turn into what's called a pingueculitis or an inflamed pinguecula okay now what
can be done for this third eyeball the
pincuecula that's on your eye a lot of times
if it's inflamed if you have a pingueculitis it will resolve on its own
or if it seems to be irritated it will resolve
the callus in the eye this built up growth tissue
won't go away so this point it kind of becomes a maintenance issue is you don't
want it to get worse so because it's uv related you want to
be wearing sunglasses as much as you can anything you can do to block that uv
light will limit the growth of this pinguecula
even in the glasses you want to consider getting the photochromic lenses the
transitions that can go dark or lenses that actually
have uv uv protection in them if you're around
in dusty environments dry dusty environments you can get or
you can consider getting those sunglasses that actually have
the shields or the guards around them to limit how much dust is getting into your
into your eye a lot of times bikers will wear those because there's a lot of wind
that's blowing right in their eye and and so if you wear these shields the
wind won't get into the inside the sunglasses
typically people with dry eyes tend to get this more and so you want to really
stay on top of your dry eye treatments anything you
can do to limit the growth of this tissue the pinguecula
the better you'll be in the long run so if you can develop a routine use of
artificial tears a habit try and getting up to where you can use
them four times a day that's going to be ultimately the best
thing you can do to keep this pinguecula from growing like
crazy some people like to use thicker eye drops eye artificial tear
gels that can coat the eye a little bit better i'll leave links down below so
you can check those out now sometimes if this pinguecula becomes a pingueculitis
becomes inflamed irritated red it almost looks like you have a red
spot on your eye instead of a yellow spot
at that point i would say it's probably good to go see your eye doctor
because he may be able to prescribe a steroid eye drop or an
anti-inflammatory eye drop to calm that pinguecula down to get rid of the
redness and the inflammation just to make it feel better and also in
general if you're just worried about a spot growing on your eye go
into the eye doctor just to be safe better to be safe than sorry because
there are other things that it could be other more
serious growths on your eye that it could be
so you want to make sure you have it correctly diagnosed that it is this
pinguecula because it's going to be it could be
other things so make sure that you go in to see your eye doctor
or make sure that you bring it up at your annual exam with your eye doctor
just to make sure that you have that diagnosis that is the pinguecula and
nothing else question for the comments have you
noticed if you have one of these yellow or red spots on your eyes
and what are you doing about it leave it down below in the comments also if you
could share this video if you found this video helpful
again i'm dr neal guymon dr eye guy looking out for you
and your eyes stay focused and i'll see you in the next video