What is the Cause of Dry Eye?
The human eye relies a lot on tears to supply lubrication and moisture so that you can maintain your vision and comfort. You might be surprised to learn that tears are a combination of quite a few elements: water, oil, mucus, antibodies and proteins. Once these essential components are gathered, the human eyes special glands begin to secrete it evenly across the eye. If there is an imbalance in your tear system, then you may begin to experience dry eye.
Here are some symptoms of dry eye that you might experience if your tears aren’t doing the trick:
- Light sensitivity
- A sandy feeling
- Pain
- Foreign body sensation in your eye
- Redness
- Blurred vision
- Itchiness
It may sound kind of backwards, but if you are suffering from dry eye then it might make your eyes start to run. How is it that my eyes can be dry, but also run? Well that is a great question, basically what is happening is that the tears you are producing that are running down your cheeks are lacking in lubricant, which does nothing for your eyes dryness. The reason you produce so many tears when your eyes become dry, is because your eye is sending a distress signal to your brain to produce more lubricant. The increase in tears will help to wash away any possible debris or foreign substances that are found on your eye, but won’t do much in the way of coating the surface of your eye with lubricant and keeping it feeling fresh.
If you feel that for some reason you aren’t producing enough lubricant in your tears and that you are developing a case of dry eye, make sure to contact your eye doctor for an eye examination.
