Do you try stopping ALL eye drops to check progress ?

[Physician]

Not an assumption..experience. I only speak from experience. A human life or pain is not worth the risk of assumption.

Human life ? No one is talking about a lethal condition.

[Súil Eile]

Physician, while I'd admire critical thinking and an openess to new approaches (and to be honest, most of us have found the best level of comfort by experimenting with drops a little and many of us wish our doctors would be more creative!), however I think you may be underestimating the level of pain experienced by severe DES sufferers. There is a huge risk to our quality of life by embarking on an experimental treatment. So you will find many on here are sceptical while we weigh up the risks. I know from experience that although many new ideas are advantageous, many can have detrimental effects.

I also know from experience that when you find something that works for you, or something that has benefits in theory, you want to tell everyone and it can be infuriating when others appear over-cautious or unnecessarily negative. But you have to understand how many 'brilliant new cures' are shouted about regarding DE, and how few actually work. Our eyes our precious to us, DES can last a lifetime, so we are understandably critical.

One of the things I love most about this forum is that we can all discuss new ideas in a communal environment. But it needs to be a 2-way discussion, and not everyone is going to agree with every opinion - and nor should they! People are going to offer counter-arguments and opinions and they should be respected for it.

Rebecca and Indrep have been a source of invaluable advice and support for me, and I could never thank them enough.

Human life ? No one is talking about a lethal condition.

I think if you look through this forum and read the posts about the extreme psychological and emotional affect DES can have, you might question this statement.

I am so glad that you found something that works for you! I hope your eyes keep improving

[y-gwair]

Human life ? No one is talking about a lethal condition.

Sorry but maybe you don't understand the differing range of severity within dry eye conditions. Most people suffer dry eye symptoms in their lives, sometimes mild disease is helped by drops, sometimes it can be made worse if you are hyper-sensitive or use them inappropriately (personally I found out the hard way that I am allergic to virtually all lubricants so yes, naturally my eyes 'improved' when I stopped though they are still awful).

However, many people on this board have very severe dry eye disease, sometime secondary to other inflammatory conditions that can be severely painful and life-limiting. Maybe that's hard to understand if you only suffer mild dry eyes, but please don't belittle the suffering of those of us who have intractable inflammatory dry eye disease.