Question about basal tears

[Hopeful2]

I am still trying to understand how basal tears and reflex tears fit in to the dry eye picture. If basal tears are our resting tears, would this be the tears that are produced when we sleep? We don't blink when we sleep, so I'm guessing this is basal tear production involved only. When we are awake would we not be getting a mixture of basal tears and reflex tears (from blinking). So those of use who have deminished corneal sensation (either from lasik or dry eye), we have fewer basal tears because we don't blink enough? Does blinking even play a part in basal tear production. I have more dry eye sensation when I wake up from sleeping, after about two hours. As I understand it, our meibomian glands fill with oil, as we sleep, and then it is released in our tears in the morning. Is there anyone who can shed some light on the mechanics of tear production both basal and reflex and how they are affected by sleep?

Thanks!

[Schatten]

Basal Tears = The tears that are produced all the time to keep your eyes moist and protecting nourishment to the cornea as well lubricate the eyes surface, otherwise the lids act as sandpaper (hence the gritty feeling when our eyes are dry)
Reflex Tears = The tear liquid secreted if you sneeze, cut onions, have a problem with flowers or stick a finger into your eyes

Basically the tear production is controlled by our vegetative nerve system innverating the glandulae lacrimalis (tear glands) in conjunction with the nerve endings in the corneal surface.
If we annoy our eyes some more these nerves can shout "We need more !!!" in addition to their overall task of measuring the normal tear layer. I think there are other nerves around the eye as well to registrate foreign bodies are physical stressors like wind etc. to enhance reflexive tear production.
Every time our eye lids are not shut tiny amounts of tear liquid evaporates leading to an uneven distribution of said liquid across the eye surface and blinking just corrects this because it makes sure the tear film is distributed evenly across our eyeballs surface.

I hope this helped ya.