Eye masks

[Toril]

Hello!

I have a question about sleeping with eyemasks at night. I tried tranquileyes for a while, but I was never able to sleep with them. So..now I would like to try a sleep mask instead. One eyedoctor told me once though that it could do harm to the eye to sleep with something touching the eyelids (because when you blink, you will "scratch" your eye). I sleep with my eyes partly open, so I think it would be good for my eyes to sleep with a mask. Anyone know anything about this issue?

Greetings from Toril

[Rebecca Petris]

I have a question about sleeping with eyemasks at night. I tried tranquileyes for a while, but I was never able to sleep with them. So..now I would like to try a sleep mask instead. One eyedoctor told me once though that it could do harm to the eye to sleep with something touching the eyelids (because when you blink, you will "scratch" your eye). I sleep with my eyes partly open, so I think it would be good for my eyes to sleep with a mask. Anyone know anything about this issue?

Toril,

I would say that a majority of people who buy Tranquileyes - or a sleep mask now that we have those - from our shop do so because their lids are not closing fully and they want to (a) reduce evaporation/keep moisture around their eyes and/or (b) have something on their eyes helping their lids stay shut.

Whether any of these things actually touch the lids and help them stay shut is very, very individual depending how prominent or deep set the eyes are for example. For example with tranquileyes, some find that the foam pads put pressure on their lids, while others find they don't put enough, so people have to fuss with them a bit to get it just right. I had one report from one customer who had the grey foam of the tranquileyes stick to her eye surface (ow!!) - I have never quite understood how that can happen but apparently it does. Most people seem to find it helpful in keeping the lids closed. But not everyone can sleep with something like that on.

With both sleep masks and tranquileyes, I prefer it to touch my lids partly to help keep the eye surface protected but also because if there is nothing helping my lids stay down then blinking with it on is kind of irritating (I have long lashes).

To tell the truth I don't really understand the comment about scratching the eye - do you know what he meant? Was he concerned that your eyes would fully open and the mask would touch the eye surface like the case I described?

If you want the protection but not having anything touching your eye, take a look at the Escape sleep mask at this link. Click on the picture so that you can see the other picture showing the underside of the mask, where it has the cutouts around your eyes. Maybe something like that would be worth a try.

[Toril]

Thanks a lot! I took a look at the mask...it looks like a good one! My eyes are quite big, so everytime I try to use a normal eyemask it's putting pressure on my eyes and it feels uncomfortable.

I'm not actually sure what the doctor meant with his comment! I think he meant that when blinking during sleep, at the same as having pressure on the eyes from an eyemask, could do damage to the eyes...that was his theory at least...

Toril