Today we're going to be talking about why so many of us wake up with red,
irritated dry eyes in the mornings. First going over why this even happens in the first place
and then sharing some quick easy tips of things that you can do to fix it. Let's take a look!
[Music] Hey Eyes and Shine there my friends. I'm Dr Joseph Allen I'm a board certified doctor of
Optometry and here on this channel we help people learn all about the eyes vision and finding the
best Vision products and if you're somebody who wakes up in the early mornings with your
eyes feeling really dry maybe red, irritated kind of a foreign body sensation. Maybe your visions
fluctuating. doesn't just seems like things are really blurry in the early mornings or perhaps
you don't feel any of those problems in fact your eyes feel really wet and watery in the morning?
Then this could all be caused by the same thing now previously on this channel we have done a
video about what is called nocturnal lagophthalmos which is the fancy medical way of saying somebody
that sleeps with their eyes open. Now some people do in fact sleep with their eyes pretty wide open
but most people wouldn't say that they identify with that or they don't have a family member
who's ever really looked or noticed this but instead what is probably happening if you're
somebody who does wake up with your eyes feeling dry your eyelids are probably just a little bit
cracked open and just enough where air is seeping in causing dryness but not wide enough open for
you or anyone else to notice that your eyes are indeed open and in the Ikea world what we are
seeing is people who aren't getting adequate eyelid closure or an eyelid seal in fact in
the eye clinic we can do what is called a Corb Blackie light test where we ask the patient to
close their eyes very gently like they're going to take a nap and then we shine a light through their
top eyelid and if we can still see light coming through their Lids that means that their eyelids
aren't creating a very good seal and that means they're exposed to air and can dry out easier the
idea is that although your eyelids are basically closed while you're sleeping there might be just
a little thin amount where air is able to seep through and the oils from the oil glands of the
eyelids aren't making a complete seal between the lids as many of us who have dry eye disease there
is a component of oil gland deficiency or what it's called meibomian gland dysfunction if you're
not producing enough oils then those oils aren't accumulating on the eyelids and making that Tight
Seal while you sleep and again this is believed to be one of the number one reasons why so many
people do wake up with dry eyes in the morning all right now that we know what the problem is
let's talk about how to fix it first of all most historically when eye doctors determine that this
is the problem that the eyelids are not sealing all the way or that someone's sleeping with their
eyes open most eye doctors are going to recommend someone to pick up eye drop gels or nighttime
ointments like this these are just thicker forms of eye drops that hopefully will rest on the eye
longer and hopefully last all night so that the tear film doesn't dry out the biggest downsides
to gels and ointments is that they are rather thick and so they often do blur your vision so
if you plan on reading before bedtime this may be a problem best usually save the ointments and
gels to the very last thing you do before turning off the light and try and go to sleep the other
bigger problem especially of the ointments is that the next morning when you wake up your
eyes may still be a bit blurry in fact they may feel kind of goopy because of the ointment just
resting on there all night and so a lot of people do have to end up having to clean their eyelids a
bit when they first wake up as far as specific brands of gels and ointments there's a lot of
them available and I'll put a link to some of my favorites in the video description below but I
also have a tutorial of how to use the nighttime ointments and actually get them in the eye because
it's not quite like using an eye drop so if you want to check out the tutorial video again I'll
also put that in the description below now another option that some people try are nighttime sleep
masks and there's million and a half different brands of these that you could try now I find that
they may have a utility especially if somebody sleeps with a fan on next to them and the fan
is blowing on their face or maybe with an open window but the downside is that even though maybe
your eyes overall protected your eyes still going to be open behind the sleep mask and that's why a
lot of people still end up with serious dryness in the next morning even with these masks again
I do think there is some utility with nighttime sleep masks but I just know that sometimes you'll
still wake up with bad dryness now funny enough in published research cases they have used glad
presence seal to basically seal around the orbit of the eyelids and then trap the moisture on the
eye and this is something that people have tried and done by simply cutting out a little
bit of glad press and seal and then sealing around their eyes I try to do this right now
and so yeah uh basically I've closed my eyelids and pressed around the orbits and yeah so my eyes
are glad press and sealed the biggest downside to this is that you obviously can't see through
it and uh if you have sensitive skin it's tough to say if this is going to be really that safe
for your skin or what's going on there but again there are published cases on it and there may be
some benefit to it but now if you don't want to go the route of trying the Glad press and
seal we do have something called sleep tight sleep right this is in fact kind of a venture from two
well-known Eye Care providers in the dry eye space who have looked into this research and recognized
that there was something else going on and there might be a better Easy Way convenient way to do
this basically what they created are these little things that are porous hypoallergenic latex free
tapes for your eyelids kind of a more official way of sealing the eyelids than with the Glad
press and seal basically the idea is that you're gonna get guarantee that you're getting a full
eyelid closure while you sleep now I don't have any affiliation with any of these products or the
companies that even make these products however Dr Doug DeVries who is one of the inventors of this
product he gives a lot of lectures in the dry eye space which is something I'm very interested in so
I have spoken with him and he did give me these as kind of a trial sample to try out myself but
the way that you use it is right before going to sleep again you don't want to put these on before
reading in bed or anything like that but it just comes off nice and easily and you close your eyes
and you put the tape right on a closed eyelid for both the top and bottom and you basically create
a really good moisture seal and they got the nice tab off here to the side so you can remove
them easily what I do like is that my eyelid is closed and I do not need to like forcefully keep
my eyelid closed at all and that's for some people part of the issue is that once they go to they
actually start falling asleep their muscles relax and their eyelids crack open from this the tape
just holds it close permanently and what I like about it is it's not a really tough tape sort of
a feel it's something that you can just peel off nice and gently it's not even like a Band-Aid in
anything like that it's very soft however I have found that it's kind of a one-time use thing is
that once you use this you are going to have to discard it and uh if you wake up in the middle
of the night and have to put on another one or the next following night you're going to want
to get a brand new one of these if you want to check out more information about the sleep tight
sleep right I know a lot of eye clinics are now offering them at their local Clinic you can also
find them online they're around 40 US dollars for a month supply and I will have some links
in the description below if you do want to learn a little bit more about them but it's something
that I have been giving out trials to my patients and I know some patients have been purchasing them
and finding really good success with them I think the only thing for me personally is that I still
can feel something on my face and kind of bugs me and keeps me awake at night so at one point
I even tried doubling up using the Sleep type sleep right and then using a sleep mask and that
actually kind of took away that irritation feeling like something was on my face I it just it kind
of calmed me down shut off all the light sort of thing outside of the sleep tight seat right there
is one that's kind of similar called the Nictavi like Tarsus patch however that one's like medical
grade uh almost like an industrial strength sort of thing and I think it's more um better
used for like in-office procedures and I'm not even really sure if it's available to the public
it may be something that's only available to Eye Clinic offices but something to ask a local doctor
about all right so now outside of those different treatments that we just mentioned specifically for
people who have more dryness when they first wake up in the morning there's a lot going on with a
dry eye diagnosis dry eye syndrome is very complex if you are having this dryness it usually kind of
kicks off a Cascade of inflammation inflammation that makes dry eyes worse and worse over time and
very difficult to treat and I have a lot of videos going more in depth into different treatments
things that are well beyond just using eye drops and eye ointments and in these videos we go over
a lot of different medications and even in office procedures that many eye clinics may be able to
offer to you and if you haven't seen many of those I do think you'll find them really helpful and to
find those easily you can check on the side of the video but also put a complete list in
the description below this video below that like button however either way I do strongly recommend
that you do talk to a local eye care professional to get the proper diagnosis a treatment that you
deserve otherwise my question for you is have you tried any of the treatment options that we
discussed have you tried ointments and gels have you tried sleep masks have you even tried the
sleep tight sleep right I would really love your feedback on a product like that mostly because
that is a newer product on the market and I would love to get that feedback and I could even try
to relay that over to Dr DeVries otherwise I hope that you found this video valuable and that brings
you some great dry eye relief if you do want to learn more about why people get watery or teary
eyes as well as what kind of solutions we have for that in the eye clinic then check out the video
coming up over here to the side otherwise until next time keep an eye on it and we'll see you soon