Location, location, location

[Cali Girl]

I live in California, where humidity is pretty darn low and the air is dry. My father lives in Tennessee and the few times I visted him were in the summer and it was sticky, muggy, humid. Of course he was aclimated to it, so to touch him was nice and dry, but touch me and I felt soaking wet. The last time I visited was years before my dry eye problem began.

My question is, are the number of people with DES much higher in states where the humidity is low and the air dry? I would suspect yes, but I was shocked at the whole "don't use ointment" thing too.

Has anyone lived in a dry climate and either moved or visited a moister climate and found some relief. Not that I'm looking to up and move, but wondering.

[Rebecca Petris]

My question is, are the number of people with DES much higher in states where the humidity is low and the air dry? ...
Has anyone lived in a dry climate and either moved or visited a moister climate and found some relief. Not that I'm looking to up and move, but wondering.

The answers are not as simple or intuitive as you would think.

All else being equal dry eye occurs more and is more severe in very dry climates I believe. I spoke a few times recently with a patient in extremely severe condition who lives in New Mexico and in the course of trying to get some help for her all the doctors I spoke to said flatly "The first thing she needs to do is get out of NM."

BUT that doesn't mean that dry eye patients do better or that there are fewer of them in humid climates. Why?

a) Air conditioning EVERYWHERE running full power.

b) More allergans more of the time. People with dry eyes may be more vulnerable to ocular allergies.

c) If it's not just a moist climate but also warm, chances are there are a lot of retirees... most of whom have dry eye in some degree or another.

I live in Tampa, Florida. I know people who have moved here to be in a more eye-friendly climate. But at the same time this state has enormous numbers of dry eye patients and every eye doctor deals with a lot of dry eye, for these same reasons. Likewise, you'll find that some of the best-known dry eye experts are in humid places (eg Pflugfelder in Houston, Tseng in Miami).

[southhavenjen]

I am in Michigan, where we usually have very humid summers. I can tell you I feel 100% better in the summer when the humidity is high than I do in the winter when all the indoor air is dry as a bone from heating. I am already starting to feel better as the weather is warming up. The less the furnace runs, the happier my eyes are. I can really tell a difference. For some reason, my eyes are not nearly as sensitive to AC, but then we don't have it in our home so it's not like I'm in an air-conditioned environment 24/7. I'm not too bothered by the AC at work.

[jcorbett]

I also think pollution has a lot to do with it. Highly populated cities, even in humid climates, have a lot of cars and factories. I notice people say they do great when visiting Mexico or Caribbean islands, yet they have problems in humid places in the US. Mexico/Caribbean has far less pollution then the US....there are not the factories or the traffic jams.

[Lucy]

A/C does not bother me nearly as much as heat. Living in a 6 month (at least) heating area, the furnace running is a killer. Even adding the humidifier doesn't bring the air to comfortable.

I have central A/C and it is not needed for long periods of time. I use it when it's hot, in other words, when I feel the need. (My hubby thinks I should wait for him to tell me when I 'can' use it.) That means when he's hot. lol. The A/C is just not the eye-killer the furnace can be, at least for me. We have a high allergy component that causes it's own teror, though.

You do not know what dry is until you're in the car for a long trip and it's so cold you have to keep the heater and defrosters going full-time to keep the windows clear of fog and frost. That's done for another 6 months or so! Yeah!

[neil0502]

Cali Girl-

This is Cali Guy ... from San Diego. No heat or a/c on at the moment (all morning, actually), and the humidity meter (hygrometer) reads 42%. Not bad.

Cited below is a study that will give you some pretty on-point and quantitative information about the impact of relative humidity on the rate of tear evaporation [1]

This is of enormous importance to my wife and me, as we're considering moving to Northern Colorado. An average July afternoon here in San Diego is about 67% RH (relative humidity). In Fort Collins, CO, it's about 38%.

I'd really like to live there, so I'm doing everything possible to get the best handle I can on this dry eye thing. If I "come up against my limitations" in Colorado, we'll move (I'm dumb, but not stupid ).

In my life, I've visited both the equatorial tropics (places like Indonesia) and took a tour through the Sahara. Again: environment makes a world of difference.

Best,
Neil
----
[1] http://www.optistock.com/spotlight16c.htm

Relative humidity (RH) may play a greater role in the severity of dry eye symptoms than previously thought, say researchers in Dallas. Their data pool, from a number of clinical studies, consisted of 128 females and 201 males; 156 measurements were from dry-eye patients and 173 from normal patients. Room temperature and light remained constant over the experimental span of 18 months. A humidity sensor was mounted 1.5 cm from the ocular surface inside an eye goggle. With the patient's eye closed, desiccated air was pumped into the goggle until the RH dropped below 15 percent. With air flow stopped and the patient's eye still closed, RH was recorded until it reached 45 percent. This process was repeated with the patient's eye open during the recording phase. Evaporation was calculated from the rate of change of RH in two different ranges, 25 to 35 percent, and 35 to 45 percent, and reported in ml of water evaporated per cm2 of exposed ocular surface per minute.

The rate of evaporation in the 25 to 35 percent RH range was 0.047 ±0.025 ml/cm2/min. The evaporation in the range of 35 to 45 percent RH was 0.033 ±0.017 ml/cm2/min. Thus a small reduction of relative humidity (10 percent) resulted in an average increase in evaporation of 40.8 percent. The difference in the corresponding rates of evaporation was statistically significant.[92]

[Cali Girl]

Thank you for the hard data.

When were you hoping to make your move?

[neil0502]

Hard data. It's what's for breakfast.

That's the thing....

We're trying to work the notion of moving around the progress that I hope to make in improving my eye situation. I'm taking a pretty hard run at this thing because the last two times we visited Fort Collins, the dryness was brutal.

I'm trying out a rigid gas permeable contact lens called an "intra-limbal" lens. It's bigger than a regular (corneal) lens, but smaller than the -- what does Lucy call 'em? Pie tin?? -- scleral lens, offering increased wear time and improved comfort, but it is not a 'reservoir' that you first fill with saline.

I've also gotten a prescription for two eyedrops from a compounding pharmacy:

1) Hyaluronic Acid -- I'm shooting for 1%, but the pharmacist is trying to talk me down It'll be what I use at night, but--if it's not tooviscous, then I'll use it during the day, too. It seems just fine to use with contacts;

2) Ophthalmic castor oil, based on its demonstrated effects on improving evaporative dry eye due to MGD (or other causes).

We're likely moving there either way. We'll just rent. If it doesn't work because of the dry air ... after a reasonable 'acclimatization period,' we'll ... uh ... do something else.

[Lucy]

what does Lucy call 'em? Pie tin?? -- scleral lens

I call them hub caps...........or toilet plungers.

[Rebecca Petris]

...or toilet plungers.

No, that's the gizmo I use to remove my Macrolenses with!!!

[HOSADOS]

location location -see my post in the Travel forum

I have just posted some relevant information in the Travel forum

I live in California, where humidity is pretty darn low and the air is dry. My father lives in Tennessee and the few times I visted him were in the summer and it was sticky, muggy, humid. Of course he was aclimated to it, so to touch him was nice and dry, but touch me and I felt soaking wet. The last time I visited was years before my dry eye problem began.

My question is, are the number of people with DES much higher in states where the humidity is low and the air dry? I would suspect yes, but I was shocked at the whole "don't use ointment" thing too.

Has anyone lived in a dry climate and either moved or visited a moister climate and found some relief. Not that I'm looking to up and move, but wondering.