Dry Eyes Support Group
Dry eyes is an eye disease caused by decreased tear production or increased tear film evaporation. Symptoms include burning and a sandy-gritty eye irritation that gets worse as the day goes on. The symptoms are often caused by a loss of water from the tears that results in tears that are too "salty" or hypertonic.
I started having a problem with dry eyes when I started taking antidepressant medication in my early 20s. It has gotten worse over the years and about a year ago it got to point where I need to use eye drops every hour while at work. I experience intense discomfort between eye drop applications and am usually not able to apply eye drops as needed. I couple of optometrists recently have tried a few different solutions to no avail. The current plan is something called IPL (Intense Pulsed Light). It is expensive, requires four treatments, and will involve a 2.5 hour drive each way.
Does anyone have experience with this? What insight do you have?
I’ve had severe dry eyes since March of 2010 when I had Botox and got an injury that my eyes never fully recovered from. Since then I have been using a number of different type of eyedrops but my hands-down favourite that I have been using since 2016 is the Systaine Ultra Hydration that comes in 30 single-use vials. I use each vial more than once and re-fit there little stopper on it to protect the opening. I go through about 1-3 vials a day depending on the conditions ;also whether I lose one of the vials and have to open up a new one). Another thing that has helped is hot moist compresses on the eyes. On Amazon you can get eye compresses that you heat up in the microwave—that too is helpful and does a bit of what that treatment you spoke about does.