blurry vision can be one of the most common symptoms of dry eyes
in fact patients will come in saying hey i have blurry vision will check their prescription and
find out their prescription is exactly the same and then we tell them hey you have dry eyes and
that might be kind of confusing to the patient because a lot of times they don't even feel like
they have dry eyes so in this video we're going over three reasons why your vision might be blurry
due to dry eyes and also three things that you can do at home to help you out let's focus in
reason number one and there's one thing that we have to understand here the tear layer of the
eyes the tear film is the front line of defense of the eyes it's also the first thing that light hits
to be focused for the eyes so when light is traveling through air and it hits the
eye it actually hits the tears first and the tears actually start the focusing of your eyes
so if your tears aren't there if you have a really thin tear layer or maybe you haven't blinked very
well and so you don't have a fresh coat of tears over your eyes right out of the gate you're having
trouble focusing that light that's getting to the eyes and that could lead to blurry vision
distorted vision hazy vision sometimes you'll have glare or halos coming off of lights all because
that tear layer isn't adequate reason number two along the same lines if you have a thin
tear layer or if your tear film isn't there that can actually leave the cornea exposed to the air
and that cornea can actually dry out really fast in fact sometimes in the clinic we actually do
something called the tear break-up time or t-butt and this is to see how fast the tears actually
evaporate from the surface of the eye now if it's going really really fast that leaves the cornea
exposed a lot more than it should and sometimes can actually cause the cornea to haze over
and it's almost like if you take your mouth and put it up against a window and do this
it can cause little hazy areas cloudiness and as you can imagine can cause a blurry
vision now if you're experiencing this a lot of times you'll notice that you might have
fluctuating blurry vision you might notice that sometimes your vision might be clear
and then sometimes your vision might be blurry and if it's blurry sometimes you can actually blink or
rub your eyes and actually can clear it up that's because you're actually getting a
fresh coat of tears on there or you're kind of squeegeeing the cornea off a little bit
you're squeegeeing that hazy part of the cornea that got hazed over reason number three and this
keeps building up into more severe stages here if you don't have tears on the eyes the eyes or
the surface of the cornea is drying out a lot a lot of times you will get keratitis that's
inflammation of the cornea sometimes we see that as superficial punctate keratitis little dots or
blots or spots of dry patches on the cornea that can also be quite painful and irritating can also
feel weird in the eye can cause a foreign body sensation sometimes you'll get punctate erosions
little erosions or thin sluffed off areas of the cornea can also be painful and irritating as well
and if it gets really severe if you get a portion of the cornea that is dry enough sometimes you can
get ulcers neurotrophic ulcers where the cornea just really sloughs off to the point where it
gets so hazy opaque painful and it can actually scar and lead to irreversible damage to the cornea
and if it gets bad enough it can lead to blindness and as you can imagine if you get a lot of those
dry patches on the cornea or those erosions trying to look through those dry patches can be
really irritating and really blurry because that's actually blocking the light or distorting
the light that's getting through the cornea so a lot of times treating dry eyes is trying to treat
those dry patches that are on the surface of the cornea and can be pretty tricky to get rid of now
before we get into any treatments that you can do at home if you've learned anything new definitely
hit that like button also share this video for other people if you think it will help them out
treatment number one that you can do at home and you probably guessed that i was going to say this
and that's to use artificial tears i usually always recommend preservative-free artificial
tears this keeps your eyes from being exposed to some preservatives that you might be sensitive to
you can also use the preservative-free artificial tears a little bit more a little bit more frequent
if you need to and it'll still be safe for the eye now if you've used artificial tears in the
past you might be someone that says hey i used artificial tears and it only helped for about 20
seconds it didn't really solve the problem it didn't really help that much it wasn't really
worth it and i actually will agree with you on this one but let me explain why i still
recommend artificial tears you can think of using artificial tiers like using lotion on your hands
but the key to using artificial tears is that you want to be consistent with them and you
actually want to use them before your eyes get to a blurry or a dry symptom stage not only are you
supplementing the tears with artificial tears so then you can have better vision but you're coating
the surface of the eye and trying to prevent those patches those dry eye patches from showing up
you're trying to prevent keratitis or inflammation of the cornea and so by using artificial tears
even though you might not feel a relief from the dry eye symptoms i would still do it because you
were gonna do it to prevent your eyes from getting worse maybe later that day or later that evening
you're preventing your eyes from progressing along the dry eye symptoms now for the artificial
tiers that i recommend check out the link in the description below they're ones that i use myself
and also i found have been helpful to a lot of my patients now there are different types of dry
eye aqueous deficient you're not producing enough tears but a big portion of dry eyes is meibomian
gland dysfunction or poor quality of tears caused by poor oil coming from the oil glands in your
eyelids and those oil glands the oil in those oil glands are produced and built and made by
the omega-3s supplied by your blood so if you have poor diet with low omega-3s it can definitely have
an effect on your dry eyes and dry eye symptoms and i've seen enough research that i recommend
omega-3 supplements to my patients that might have poor oil quality coming out of their oil glands
and i put the links in the description below that my favorite ones that i usually recommend
number three and a big thing that you can do at home that can be very helpful
is eyelid hygiene now eyelid hygiene is an umbrella term for a lot of different things
that you can actually do at home to help out your oil glands and your dry eyes so if you definitely
suffer from dry eyes that includes meibomian gland dysfunction or especially blepharitis
all of these can definitely help eyelid hygiene tips can include using hypochlorous acid solution
spray to help control overpopulation of the bacteria cleaning your eyelids with either
an eyelid wipe or using a device or a scrubber tool that can actually clean the debris and the
biofilm and the bacteria off of your eyelids that might be messing up with your oil glands
new lids is a really good device that can actually help quite a bit and also warm
compresses and eyelid massages when done properly and safely can definitely help with the production
of the oil coming out of your oil glands or keeping the oil glands working properly now
the key to this one and these treatments is to be consistent a lot of times you might do
it one night or for a couple days and not really notice a difference but you really need to be
consistent about doing it to prevent your eyes from advancing into the more severe stages or
getting worse if you're consistent you should notice a difference now everybody's different
everybody's dry eyes is caused by different things and different treatments might work
better for some people and some people might not work at all but definitely check in with
your eye doctor find out what type of dry eyes you have what treatments might work best for you now
if you want to learn more definitely check out my playlist about dry eyes right there i go into more
detail about warm compresses eyelid massages doing them safely which warm compresses i actually like
the best blepharitis how to clean your eyelids what works best for cleaning your eyelids and more
advanced dry eye treatments about mega threes what type of omega-3s how much should i take that's all
in this playlist you can definitely check that out also comment below if you have any questions i'll
definitely answer any questions that you have i'm Dr. Neal Guymon, Dr. EyeGuy, stay focused