POLL: How much sleep do you get?

[TheJuicer]

I want to find out a correlation between the amount of sleep people get and the condition of their eyes. My assumption is that everyone here has some type of dry eye complication and so sleep plays a major role in our eyes healing at night. Maybe some of us are in a cycle where we never get enough sleep to have the proper tear film and general eye health. I know for myself I rarely get 7 hours of sleep, maybe sometimes on weekends but surely doesn't seem like enough. And on rare times when I do get more then 7 hours I don't generally notice a difference in my eyes but maybe consecutive weeks or months with good sleep habits would produce positive results. I doubt this type of theory could be true as it seems way too simple but I just thought I'd get some feedback and be interesting to say the least. Thanks for you participation.

[sanna]

I canīt sleep because of the eyepain before this dryeye thing i always slept 7-8 hours. Now i am tired all the time.

[lizibet]

sleep

Before lasik I slept a wonderful 8 hours, now I sleep at most 4 hours before I wake with the pain, and then if I am lucky I will get back to sleep within half an hour (more usually an hour plus) and have another maybe 2 hours sleep.

lizibet

[calcan]

I think you've brought up an important issue that hasn't been discussed much. I don't get the sleep I need ( I suffer from insomnia a lot), and I definitely notice that my eyes improve when I'm better rested. I sleep better during vacation time, and that, coupled with less stress, alleviates some of the dryness and redness.

[Stanza]

since geting dry eye I think I've slept through the night twice, maybe it's good I wake up though so I can put in more drops. My eyes are extra annoying in the mornings so sleep doesn't help me unfortunately.

[mary kenny badami]

I had a chronic health problem, not eye-related, which was improperly diagnosed for nearly three years. Although I might total several hours of sleep every night, I couldn't stay asleep more than an hour or two at a time. So the quality of my sleeping was truly dreadful, and I felt low on energy most of the time. Once my condition was properly diagnosed and remedied, I couldn't believe how much better I felt, and how much better I managed my life. What a restoration, both physically and emotionally, to regularly experience a full night's UNINTERRUPTED sleep!

But it seems to me that there is a particular dilemma for people with serious dry eyes and/or recurrent corneal erosions: we may involuntarily or consciously awaken one or more times in the middle of the night from the pain, or because we are trying to keep our eyes consistently hydrated. I'm sure that sleep-deprivation takes its toll, whether we are lacking quantity or quality of sleep.

[TheJuicer]

Thanks for the responses everyone. I am actually somewhat surprised of the amount of people that get 8+ hours a night of sleep. With everyday life, family kids, work, seems it's hard to have enough time in the day let a lone get the right amount of sleep at night. My guess is that the older we get the more sleep we get but at the same time our eyes get dryer with age. But those that wake up to hydrate the eyes have a tough time getting the deep sleep which I believe is needed. Thankfully the pain so far for me does not wake me up periodically throughout the night but my guess is that it will get worse if I can't come up with answers. So based on the poll so far I can't say that no sleep makes dry eyes worse or causes it. But I still believe it aids in the cause of dry eyes but maybe not the only culpret. Maybe some more votes could either point things in 1 direction or another.

I have been noticing lately that my right bottom lid doesn't close properly because I believe it gets caught on my cornea. I have severe KC and the shape is very oblong which I think is a big reason for my issues. I've had a transplant in my other eye already but even after surgery the cornea still has severe astigmitism and not a very smooth cornea from the stitches. When I sleep I don't believe my tears properly cover the cornea because of the cornea's shape and my lids can't properly spread the tears. In a way I think the tears get caught in certain areas and can't get to other areas. But this is all just my guesses at this point.

Thanks again for all your participation.