New member story- 24yo male

[gilligan_1434]

Hi all,

My story started at 18 yrs. old, I started getting extremely red irritated eyes. I didn't know what was going on so went to a general practitioner who told me I had pink eye. Eventually I went to an optometrist who said I had allergies. He gave me Vigamox and it got me back to almost normal.

By 20 I had had many ups and downs with red eyes, then one time they really came back with a vengeance. I went to an optometrist again and he decided to do Schirmer's test (test tear volume) and drops (testing oil layer) to see how my tears were. They were lacking. So he gave me lotemax and said to do lid scrubs. The lotemax worked wonders and I tried to do the lid scrubs often but they didn't seem to help so I gave up on them. From here on I've been using theratears and/or soothe XP whenever I feel I need a quick pick-me-up.

After about a year of lotemax whenever I felt I needed it, I was getting concerned that this was going to be a very chronic problem and wanted to be cured... not treated with steroids. I went to an opthalmologist this time who tested my tears again and was concerned I had Sjogrens. He referred me for many many tests to see if I had lupus and I'm not sure what other autoimmune diseases... I was devestated that something really serious might be going on... but all tests came back negative. Not even Sjogrens was confirmed. Good news! But I still had dry, red eyes.

So I went on Restasis. It didn't help with the dryness but it seemed to keep the redness away. I gave up on after about 8 months because it wasn't real relief.

So, about 1 year ago I've started trying whatever I could come up with. I'm currently doing 4 things almost in desperation but surprisingly my eyes are doing very well. I only use moisturizing drops about 2 times a day and they're almost never red.

My current therapies (since nothing else has worked):

1)Gluten free diet (my sibling has celiac so I am at high risk for this, and since it is known to cause dry eyes, I'm doing it. I've been strict about it for about 5 months now)

2)Fish oil (opthalmologist recommended)

3) getting enough vitamin A and D (I've read vitamin A drops can be effective, so why not get enough systemic vitamin A? Vitamin D simply because I was low based on a blood test)

4) Stopped using toothpaste (I'm willing to try almost anything non-invasive at this point, and it gives me perioral dermatitis so I have more reason than just a desperate attempt at curing dry eyes. I stopped about 2 weeks ago and so far I can say it definitely did not hurt my eyes.)

[gilligan_1434]

A quick aside on why I bothered to consider toothpaste a possible culprit (in addition to it causing my skin irritation)

As a student of anatomy, I learned that the nerve that tells the lacrimal gland to lacrimate has a course that puts it fairly close to the oral cavity. The exact course uses the pterygopalatine ganglion as a connection between two neurons in the pathway. That ganglion is located right above the oral cavity so you could see how any irritants in the toothpaste could get to it and somehow block lacrimation if you were allergic to toothpaste.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterygopalatine_ganglion

[gilligan_1434]

A small update: I've found that I've been biting my lips/cheeks/tongue way more than normal (~5 times in the last 2 weeks). That is about a year's worth of accidental biting for me. It could be coincidence but I'm chalking it up to something that has changed as a result of quitting the use of toothpaste.

My breath has not been bad at all (I've confirmed this with people that are close to me)

Another detail about my dry eyes: they are extremely affected by humidity. If humidity is 50-60%, they are usually doing pretty well. Less than 40% and they're usually bothering me.