Finding good eye drops in the USA

[adienich]

Hello all!

I have been suffering from dry eyes for a bit over a year now. It mostly bothers me towards the evening and at night – if I don’t use any eye drops before going to sleep, opening my eyes in the morning will be very difficult and painful. However, I’d been coping quite well with it since I found gel drops that worked well.

However, I recently moved from a European country to the USA and haven’t been able to find similar eye drops here. I was wondering, then, if anyone might have any suggestions as to what works best for them at night. I’d be happy if I didn’t have to go through trying several different products as I already did that last year in my home country.

The product I used in Europe contains carbomer and benzalkon chlorid, but I haven’t been able to find anything comparable even though I’ve searched online and at a drug store a lot. (Maybe asking a pharmacist might help – but my nearest pharmacy is a convenience store where they don’t know these things). If anyone knows anything similar, or has tips on how to find something good, that would be much appreciated. Of course these things are often individual and what works well for someone might not be so good for me, but still, hints on good products would be appreciated.

[Rebecca Petris]

The product I used in Europe contains carbomer and benzalkon chlorid

Well... this might be the perfect opportunity to STOP using drops with benzalkonium chloride because that's a very toxic preservative which will be bad for your eyes long term.

I kind of don't think we have any carbomer drops in the US... I might be wrong so speak up anybody if you know otherwise. I think Refresh Endura used to have some in one of its formulations but I don't think that's on the US market anymore (avail. in Canada but you'd have to check the specific formulation). Could you maybe order some Viscotears from the UK (I'm pretty sure that's preservative free) over the internet?

[adienich]

Oh, I didn't know that ingredient was the preservative. Sounds bad... but I checked the ingredients on the bottle that I have, luckily most of the time I used individually packaged drops of the same brand which didn't have preservatives. I guess carbomer then is the ingredient that matters. How unfortunate if it can't be found here. Hopefully I can find something else that works.

[Trac]

When my eyes were not too bad I used Refresh ointment at night before I went to bed. Without the ointment my eyes felt like they were stuck to my eyelids in the morning.

[Schatten]

Just tried to google some for fun, as it seems they use completely different ingredients in the USA xD
I've never thought the products to be SO different from what I get in germany/europe lol

Side note: Avoid cetrimide as well, it's also a perservative, dunno about boric acid as it is a preservate as well as a pH-value stabilizer.

[adienich]

It is surprising that these kinds of products should be so different between Europe and America. I knew the brand names might be different but didn't expect that ingredients used would be as well.

Thanks for the tip on Refresh ointment, maybe I will try that. It also seems to be possible to order Viscotears from Amazon.
This is an interesting forum, after reading some old posts I think I will also look into trying flaxseed oil.

It seems my eyes have been getting worse lately, I'm sure the American habit of having airconditioning on everywhere doesn't help. (Or the fact that I spend all day reading and working on the computer, but that was true at home as well.)