so if you suffer from dry eye syndrome then there's a good chance that a component of your
dryness comes from evaporative forms of dry eye disease and in this video
i'm going to break down the different dry eye treatments that are available
for evaporative dry eye that's today's video let's take a look
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products thank you to Eye Eco for keeping our eyes feeling hydrated. hello and welcome this is Dr.
Allen here from the Doctor Eye Health show helping you learn all about the eyes vision and finding
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now again today we're going to be talking about evaporative forms of dry eye treatment
and whether that be something that you can just do at home on your own it's very conservative
treatment or if it's something more advanced that you can only be done in an eye clinic we're going
to be covering all of that now when it comes to evaporative forms of dry eye probably the most
popular and most common contributing factor for evaporation has to do with what's called meibomian
gland dysfunction or mgd this is where the oil glands in the eyelids called the meibomian glands
they stop producing enough oils to stop the tears from evaporating or the oils themselves could be
just very poor quality now most commonly eye care professionals will often recommend a conservative
treatment of just doing warm compresses at home a warm compress is a way to get heat to the eyelids
so that the oils trapped in those lids can be melted and allow those oils to leach out so
your eyelids can make new fresh oils that'll help prevent your tears from evaporating now there are
many different ways to do warm compresses and i've recommended several of them throughout time here
on this channel some of my favorite ones are ones that you actually heat up at home or they
activate and then they provide not just heat but moist heat it is important to note that if you're
doing warm compresses on your own you do need to do them for at least 10 to 20 minutes at a time
and they have to be a consistent amount of heat to have any sort of clinical benefit then after doing
warm compresses oftentimes doctors will recommend doing a digital massage or some form of massage to
encourage those oils that have now been melted by the heat of the warm compress to kind of push and
squeegee out any of those thickened oils out of the eyelids you can do that just digitally with
your finger and i have a whole video guide on how to do that again i'll put that in the
video description below but there's also other devices that can be used to help with this too
one of those tools that i've used is one called the NuLids device this is almost kind of like an
electric toothbrush but it helps clean the eyelids and then has an oscillating kind of sonic motion
that helps agitate the eyelids and allows those oils to break up and again release out
of those lids and then there's even a newer warm compress to the market from EyeEco that heats up
the eyelids like a warm compress but then also has a vibrating function in it to help again agitate
those eyelids and get those oils to release now because meibomian gland dysfunction is so common
and is really the leading cause for evaporative forms of dry eye disease in many cases there's a
lot of research going into different ways we can treat it right now most studies do implicate that
basically everybody with mild to severe forms of meibomian gland dysfunction could benefit
from having some form of heating heatable and mechanical compression done in the clinic this
can be done through a device called Lipiflow which some clinics will have and then some clinics will
even have another one called ilux which basically do the same thing they heat up the eyelids in the
office but allow for a compression motion that compresses both sides of the eyelid to
really fully get all of those thickened oils out of those lids outside of these two current
treatments the ilux and lipiflow there is also the treatment of using what's called ipl or intense
pulsed light it's used off label but it does also help with the oil glands of the eyelids
and helps people produce better oils of the eye now in fact there are many other treatments for
mgd and i want to go into more detail about them but we're going to save that for another video so
if you are not in fact subscribed to the channel make sure you do that so that you
get a notification when that video comes out now outside of just the meibomian gland dysfunction
people can also have lid aperture disorders this is where the eyelids don't close 100 correctly
and that leaves air around the surrounding eye to cause evaporation of the tears now one of the more
medical causes for this could be something like thyroid eye disease this is where problems with
their thyroid cause their eye muscles to swell and that'll push the eyes outward and that means their
eyelids aren't going to close over the eye 100 percent or it could be something like bell's palsy
where the side of a patient's face may droop and then the eyelids again don't close correctly onto
the eye for any medical cause for something like this that's affecting the eye then of
course medical treatment is going to be necessary to help that person otherwise some people just
have a hard time closing their eyelids all the way or they even sleep with their eyelids open
for these individuals a conservative treatment of using lubricating eye drops throughout the day
or using something thicker like a gel or an ointment lubricating treatment at night time
before bed can be helpful that's going to help coat the surface of the eye and prevent air from
causing further dryness to the surface some people may even benefit from a nighttime sleep mask
while they're sleeping to again help prevent the tears from just evaporating into the air
now even if you're somebody whose eyelid closes normally just because of the general humidity in
the air around you where you're living or it could be something like temperature or it could be just
airflow too could also cause the tears from the surface of the eye to evaporate faster if you do
live in a place where the humidity of the air is very low i know here in the winter time for me we
have the furnaces on all the time and that's going to cause the tears on the surface of the eye to
evaporate really quickly in fact i used to work at a lot of senior homes or in hospitals where
the heater or the furnace is on all the time and everybody complained of dry eye for this reason if
you're someone with that low humidity you could consider getting a humidifier for your office
or bedroom or your place of work there's many different humidifiers out on the market i just do
encourage if you get one make sure you're filling it full of distilled water and not just tap water
because tap water has other minerals and deposits in there that could be vaporized and that ends up
getting into the air onto your eye you could be breathing that in or it could even clog up your
furnace and i only say that because it happened to me once and i had a call like a repairman out
and everything so yes learn from my mistakes the other big environmental cause is that of air flow
if you're somebody who has air conditioning or a furnace blowing directly into your eye or a fan
or something like that then that again is going to cause the tears to evaporate quicker there are
treatment options such as using moisture chamber goggles which are special eyewear that helps
prevent the tears from evaporating quickly just kind of holds the moisture level around the eyes
at the proper amount and then if you happen to be somebody who has a cpap machine sometimes those
cpaps will break a seal and the air will get blown right into the eye and so you wake up with really
dry irritated eyes for somebody that's having that issue you could go again the route of using
gels or ointments but there's also nighttime sleep masks specifically designed just for cpap machines
so again i'll put some different resources all in the description below if you want to find those
now if you happen to be a contact lens where unfortunately contact lenses are just well known
to cause more dryness symptoms on the surface of the eye now contact lenses they cause more dryness
because the lipid layer on the surface of the eye is kind of disrupted by the contact lens and so
it starts to spread out very thin and then the contact lens soaks up more moisture and it just
increases the evaporation rate from the surface of the eye if you're someone who just can't switch to
glasses and just loves wearing contact lenses like myself my i would recommend looking for a contact
lens that is better for dry eye first of all speak with your local eye care professional what's best
for you but at least my personal preference i think the Daily Total 1 by Alcon or the new Bausch
and Lomb Infuse lens those are probably my two top favorite for people with dry eye symptoms. now
there's two other things that we should discuss about evaporative forms of dry eye and their
treatments but before i go over that let me know in the comments section if you're struggling with
evaporated forms of dry eye right now have you tried anything what has had what really offered
you the most success uh drop that in the comment section below because something i want to know
about but also because other people will be able to connect with you and figure out what what what
brought you success and hopefully that'll help them too now another major contributing factor
that doctors need to be aware of and treat along with dry eye is that of ocular surface diseases
namely blepharitis and allergic conjunctivitis blepharitis is a buildup of dead skin cells and
oils that get stuck on the surface of the eyelids which can cause inflammation and irritation and
then allergic conjunctivitis is where any sort of antigen that could be in the environment gets on
the eyelids and again that causes inflammation this inflammation irritation can disrupt the
tear film on the surface of the eye and really exacerbate dry eye symptoms and usually treatment
for blepharitis and allergies can include things like cleaning the eyelids every day with some
sort of an eyelid cleanser warm compresses those really help for blepharitis and then for allergies
it could be something as just as simple as using a topical antihistamine eye drop or using oral
antihistamines the only downside of using oral antihistamines for allergies is that these usually
also dry out the body and therefore can exacerbate dry eye symptoms now i really hope you found this
video helpful i know it gets a little complex dry eye is just a difficult and complex disease
but if you yourself are looking to find more information about different types of dry eye again
even more different types of treatments that are available then you can check out our full series
by clicking or tapping the screen over here to the side or if you want to see a different video from
the dr eye health channel you can go ahead and click or tap the screen down over here again this
is dr joseph allen here from the doctor eye health show, keep an eye on it and we'll talk to you soon