Food – How long does it take to affect your eyes?

[david2404]

Does anyone have an idea how much time it takes for food you consume to affect your meibomian glands and oil flow? Hours? Days? Or longer?

I've been experimenting with my diet to try and resolve quite severe MGD and blepharitis. I'm eliminating and reintroducing foods but it's difficult to identify which foods are making it worse since I'm not sure if a bad day is due to something I ate a day ago or a week ago. I have a hunch i am reacting more to carbs and sugars than I am specific foods.

If anyone has figured this out your help would be appreciated!

Thanks

David

[gilles]

I think it all depends on the food. Some food will get easily absorbed by one and not by another person. And then you also have the form in which the food is processed which impacts the absorption I think.
And every person is different, some react to gluten or yeast in a matter of 24 hours, while a lot don't; which makes it very complex.
It is not my area of expertise by any mean.
I also since recently understood that some supplements have to be taken for several months before they can have an impact, which I guess has something to do with the absorption and the time for it to have effect on the system. Omega3 for example, is best absorbed in triglyceride form rather than ethyl esters. Just like antibiotics need time before they have any effect (doxy-, minocycline). On the other hand, personally, I have a feeling that some food is easily absorbed and can quickly affect the system; like sugars for example, where one can have acne in short matter of time after eating some.

[david2404]

Thanks for the reply Gilles. I couldn't find much online in regard to the timeframe between consuming and the effect of the food on the oils in the eye. But it's interesting that you raised acne, because there's plenty of info on this and yes, as you observed, it is a pretty small timeframe. Depends on the food as you say, but looks like a matter of hours (2-12 hours) before people experience breakouts.

Knowing the timeframes for the categories of foods would be really useful for figuring out the right diet.

Anyone else have experience with this that they could share?

[orange86]

back in march i was eating chocolate and suffered flare up of severe dry eyes a day later that lasted almost a week.
white sugar causes massive inflammation to my lacrimal glands and presuming effect is reduced tear which are also toxic tears.

i'm pretty sure it effects my meibum glands as they get blocked quickly.

i try to keep my blood sugars low: eat a anti inflammatory diet, decent amount of fibre, etc

[EyeballKid]

For me it feels like a matter of hours, usually. I've identified coffee as being a source of flare ups, am not sure why, possibly the acidity or it simply being a diuretic. Seems to help if I chase it with wheatgrass (highly alkaline) or drink low acid cold brew, but I stopped experimenting because the negatives outweighed the positives.

Wheat also seems to aggravate it, which is no surprise given its inflammatory. Am starting to experiment with cutting sugar way down, buying keto, but too early to notice changes.

And of course consuming dark leafy greens such as kale, spinach, broccoli definitely helps.

[Bakagan]

It depends upon the type of a food you just swallowed. If it is liquid, like milk or soda, in 1-2 seconds it is in your stomach. If it is semisolid, like breakfast cereal of porridge ( cooked oats and milk), or yogurt with some cereal, it might be 4-6 second; but if it is more towards solid, like hamburger ( bun, cheese, meat, and other fixings) or a biscuits ( with sausage, egg, cheese), it can be as much as 7-8 seconds. These are just approximation.

[bcn90]

I have been experimenting also with diet and my severe MGD, I discovered eating a big kiwi makes my glands happy and start to produce oil in each blink after just seconds. I thought it was because of the vitamin c but it appears to be that the black kiwi seeds are packed of omega3, Also I notice same results with chia seeds, Also i take daily a glass of water with tumeric, in this case I realized increases my tear production. Ive discovered 2 years ago the medical medium, and been learning a lot about foods and disease with this guy, also been doing heavy metal smoothie and lemon water in morning,

[anteloper]

Does anyone have an idea how much time it takes for food you consume to affect your meibomian glands and oil flow?

Diet and nutrition are notoriously complicated and modern medicine is still in the very early stages of understanding these issues. We still don't know a ton.

If I eat a spicy pepper it will immediately cause an ocular rosacea flare-up and make my eyes hurt more.

If I eat cheese I'll get increased inflammation within hours and less than a few days afterwards.

And in theory, anything that affects your gut microbiome could have much more long-lasting effects.

So unfortunately it's just hard work doing researching and experimenting, and you have to take it on a case-by-case basis.

Carbs and sugars (they're similar) will generally spike your blood sugar (glycemic index) within minutes after you eat them. I'm not sure if they could affect things up to a week afterwards except via affecting the bacteria in your gut. Not sure how long the gut inflammation would last if e.g. you had like a mild form of celiac disease.

My diet is: no dairy, avoid high glycemic index foods, and no inflammatory or high-omega-6 oils. This is what's best for my skin and seems to be best for my eyes as well. For oils I mostly eat olive and "expeller pressed" canola. Coconut and avocado oil are okay too I think but I eat them less often. Not sure if conventionally processed canola oil would be okay; haven't experimented with it.

[david2404]

Thanks for the replies folks. I’m still not out of the woods with this yet but things have stabilized a bit.

A quick summary… I have had, for many years, some eye issues (MGD/Bleph/lightsensitivity) but I was managing to get by. Then, almost two years ago, my right eye, over the course of a few days, got more and more red and blurry and gritty and goopy. I presumed it was conjunctivitis. So did my GP. But it didn’t respond to the normal treatments. Then, by coincidence, I was away on a trip abroad and started taking doxycycline to prevent malaria, and my eye cleared up straight away. I was on a course of 6 weeks of doxy, but when I stopped my eye went bright red again.

I went to several doctors in London. Tried IPL and various drops (antibiotic and steroidal) over months and months of treatments. But any time I came off the docycycline my eye got really bad.

The general diagnosis was either rosacea and/or blepheritis, but the flare ups were only in my right eye.

I got to a point where, a year later, I was still on a lot of drops and still on doxycycline and there seemed no end.

So I spoke to a nutritionist who put me on the AIP diet. I also did the Cyrex intolerance testing (which was not a success for me due to ‘loss of oral intolerance’, if you understand this then you know more then me!).

Anyway, I stuck strictly to the diet for 5 months. And over the course of several months I tapered off, first the doxy and then the drops, to the point where I was only doing warm compresses and eye wipes. And that’s where I am now. Warm compress twice a day and wipes. I also take supplements and Omegas. I have pretty good days and not great ones. The vision in my right eye is crappy and blurred as the ‘quality of the oils are terrible’.

I’m not sure how much of the progress I made was due to the diet or just time taking its course. And I’m still not sure what foods exactly to avoid. But as a rule of thumb white carbs and sugars are not good. Alcohol in excess is not good. The basic stuff really. I’m still figuring it out.

I was always hoping it would be something so simple, like NO MORE BROCCOLI! Alas, it never seems that simple

[orange86]

Thanks for the replies folks. I’m still not out of the woods with this yet but things have stabilized a bit.

A quick summary… I have had, for many years, some eye issues (MGD/Bleph/lightsensitivity) but I was managing to get by. Then, almost two years ago, my right eye, over the course of a few days, got more and more red and blurry and gritty and goopy. I presumed it was conjunctivitis. So did my GP. But it didn’t respond to the normal treatments. Then, by coincidence, I was away on a trip abroad and started taking doxycycline to prevent malaria, and my eye cleared up straight away. I was on a course of 6 weeks of doxy, but when I stopped my eye went bright red again.

I went to several doctors in London. Tried IPL and various drops (antibiotic and steroidal) over months and months of treatments. But any time I came off the docycycline my eye got really bad.

The general diagnosis was either rosacea and/or blepheritis, but the flare ups were only in my right eye.

I got to a point where, a year later, I was still on a lot of drops and still on doxycycline and there seemed no end.

So I spoke to a nutritionist who put me on the AIP diet. I also did the Cyrex intolerance testing (which was not a success for me due to ‘loss of oral intolerance’, if you understand this then you know more then me!).

Anyway, I stuck strictly to the diet for 5 months. And over the course of several months I tapered off, first the doxy and then the drops, to the point where I was only doing warm compresses and eye wipes. And that’s where I am now. Warm compress twice a day and wipes. I also take supplements and Omegas. I have pretty good days and not great ones. The vision in my right eye is crappy and blurred as the ‘quality of the oils are terrible’.

I’m not sure how much of the progress I made was due to the diet or just time taking its course. And I’m still not sure what foods exactly to avoid. But as a rule of thumb white carbs and sugars are not good. Alcohol in excess is not good. The basic stuff really. I’m still figuring it out.

I was always hoping it would be something so simple, like NO MORE BROCCOLI! Alas, it never seems that simple

david2404 The AIP diet is quite restrictive. How did you maintain your weight on it and what did you eat?
I suspect a number of us with dry eye disease have leaky gut and need to eliminate the inflammartory foods and take supplements to heal the gut.

[david2404]

Very restrictive. And i lost quite a lot of weight (which i didn't want to). I didn't test for leaky gut but the diet I was on pretty much covered the advised diet for leaky gut anyway.