My Dry Eyes Are A Result Of - LASIK, Allergies, Associated Condition/Disease, Other?

[Huss]

Curious to know why the dry eye market is growing at a rate of 10-11%/annually. Is it because of the number of people using Lasik? Using the computer for prolonged periods? ETC. The number of people with dry eyes has been considerably less to my understanding 50 and even 100 years ago, so what has changed?

If there is an option I have not mentioned please post and I will attempt to add it. If its a specific condition please post it as well.



PS. For computer- don't select it as a result if its an irritant. To be a result, this happened from you spending too much time on the computer (or that is what you believe happened).

[Rebecca Petris]

The number of people with dry eyes has been considerably less to my understanding 50 and even 100 years ago, so what has changed?

Some important things that have changed in the last 50+ years:
1) Dietary change. We've gone to industrial agriculture and highly processed food. This is a huge factor.
2) Drugs and surgeries. Many drugs dry the body/eyes. Many eye surgeries from LASIK to eyelid reshaping have dry eye as a side effect.
3) Long term contact lens wear, i.e. we've got a generation of people who have worn them for 25+ years.
4) Office air. There's reams of studies about this.
5) Simple demographics. Menopausal baby boomers.

And though I've never looked into how recent a trend this is, the preponderance of auto-immune disease.

[alisonW]

I chose "other" because no docs can tell me for sure why my eyes are so dry. It could be from having taken accutane, from wearing contacts for 23 years, because I'm in perimenopause, or something else entirely. (I'm also hypothyroid and have Raynaud's Syndrome.)

You know, mine could also be caused by computer use - I taught computers for 4 years before this all started...

[Lacey1]

I had a thought about the auto-immune issue. I've been thinking about this for a while after talking to different people and reading different articles. There's a theory that some auto-immune issues are developing more because we live in a sterile environment. Our bodies adapted to fight parasites and such. Now that we lack these invaders the body doesn't have anything to attack, but itself. Some people have actually been successfully treated for Crohn's disease by being infected with intestinal worms (gross, I know). Another theory is about all of the vaccinations we get. We are decreasing some diseases, but we are causing our immune systems to go into hyper-drive. I have a close family friend who started exhibiting auto-immune issues (RA, Lupus) several weeks after getting a couple of vaccines. Just a thought, since some of these can lead to dry eyes and scientists still aren't sure of the whole mechanism behind auto-immune problems.