Humidity of 70% in the house and my eyes feel so bad

[wolfie]

weird huh...
always thought that I had to try and get the humidity up as far as possible in the house to have less pain from my eyes.

But we've had some weird weather here of the last couple a weeks and humidity meter reads 70% now here in the house.

As a result , my eyes are irritated, gritty, and "feel" dry.
In addition to that the skin around my nose and chin are also irritated (red and flakey) and just gets worse when I scratch it.
The red patches that are scratched even form superficial wounds ...


I'm starting to wonder if I just have DES or is there more ?

[dave25]

The same thing happens to me. I am allergic to dust mites and they thrive in higher humidity so I found that I need to keep my house/room around 40% humidity. If the humidity gets above 50% during the night I always wake up the next morning feeling much worse. I'm not sure if you have the same problems as me, but it took me a while to make that connection because I always wanted to get the humidity as high as I possibly could until I figured out that it was actually making it worse! I hope this helps.

[wolfie]

The same thing happens to me. I am allergic to dust mites and they thrive in higher humidity so I found that I need to keep my house/room around 40% humidity. If the humidity gets above 50% during the night I always wake up the next morning feeling much worse. I'm not sure if you have the same problems as me, but it took me a while to make that connection because I always wanted to get the humidity as high as I possibly could until I figured out that it was actually making it worse! I hope this helps.

very interesting
do you have the skinrash too ? could that be related to dustmite allergy ?
is there a test for dustmiteallergy ?

[dave25]

I don't really get a skin rash, but I do have rosacea so my skin is always a little sensitive. Yes, there is an allergy test for dust mites. It should be included in any normal testing procedure for allergies. If you do get tested you may want to ask them just to make sure.

[Goeyes]

humidity?

so from experience Say If i were to put a vaporizer in my room to add moisture to the air you think that would help with dry eye as apposed to a humidifier based on the house furnace?

Does humidity help dry eye? what you guys think?

[Guest]

I think increased humidity helps most people.

Regarding using a portable humidifier vs. a humidifier on your furnace:

I initially tried the portables... but it just didn't work well enough for me
-it was impractical to move the humidifier from room to room as needed and WAIT seemingly forever for the humidity to finally accumulate
-maintenance and cleaning of the portable units was too time consuming, plus the need for filters etc.

But I LOVE the humidifier we have on our furnace! In the summer, I don't need to run it because the indoor humidity stays above 50% on its own. But in the winter, prior to having my furnace humidifier, the indoor humidity often dropped as low as 20% which was murder on my eyes. With my humidifier (attached to the furnace system), I can now keep the humidity above 40% all winter - a HUGE improvement. Plus, there is almost zero maintenance required.

Because we have an HRV and our furnace fan is continually running, we had our contractor hook up the humidifier to run whenever the furnace fan is on, rather than only when the heat goes on.

If you have the humidifier hooked up to only run when the heat goes on and you have an HRV, you risk the HRV counteracting the humidifier's effect (ie. the HRV pumps out your nice humidified air faster than the humidifier can create it)

Anyhow, it cost us around $375 + labour for the humidifier... it was money well spent in my books! It makes my home a little humidified haven for me in the winter where everywhere else is dry as a dessert!

[djb]

I've always wondered why I would have bad days with high humidity in the forecast. Some days would be good even with low humidity. I've been watching the dew point in the forecast and I believe its a better indicator of whether I will have a good day or not. The higher the dew point, the slower the evaporation of tears. I have no oil, so that's important to me.

[Stanza]

my eyes are also worse in increased humidity, much worse.

[Guest]

my eyes are also worse in increased humidity, much worse.

I find that so interesting.... I wonder what could cause that? Maybe increased mold spores in the air or something?

(Geez, you know you're a tad obsessed with dry eyes when you find the effects of humidity on dry eyes interesting haha)