No reason to have these dry eyes!

[Emerald]

Hi! I'm a 22 year old female college student and have been suffering with dry eyes for about a year. My opinion is that this started after I was taking some strong antibiotics for about a week.
I've been wearing contact lenses for about 8 years and glasses since age 2. I am extremely farsighted and have astigmatism in both eyes - I can't go without glasses or contacts, but prefer to wear contacts. Since this started, it has been extremely difficult to wear my contacts (unfortunately my prescription doesn't come in daily lenses yet in the USA..they do in a few other countries, though!) I think daily lenses would at least help me to get into contacts occasionally -- at least on a Fri or Sat night!
Having extremely dry eyes has made life very difficult for me. I've been to my regular ophthamologist/optometrist, Dr. Michael Gagnon, as referred on this site, regular MD to check thyroid, Sjogrens and other auto-immune problems, but all blood work has turned out fine. I've also gone to a highly regarded Chinese doctor, which gave me lots of ideas. (Vitamin C Complex, dandelion tea a couple of times a day, carrot juice, KYO powder, Eye bright and suggested to increase water intake. I've done all of it, but to no avail. I also have very dry nasal passages. I've used a humidifier in my bedroom at night and it doesn't help, still have to pry my eyes open in the morning and hear them 'crack'. I have tried drop after drop and have been on Restasis for seven months, and nothing has helped. I'm thinking of using Trader Joe brand probiotics, to see if that will help neutralize the antibiotics from a year ago.
Thank you for listening, if anyone has any suggestions or ideas, I'd greatly appreciate it.

[mjszabo]

Agreed - no reason to have these dry eyes either!

So I'm not sure that I've heard of many other people my age being diagnosed with dry eyes... I just turned 23 and was diagnosed 1.5 years ago with dry eyes - at first they went back and forth diagnosing me with different eye problems since they didn't think I should have dry eyes. As far as I've heard I am the complete opposite of the norm - the docs told me that its most common in non-white women in menopause and that its so unlikely that I would have it. Well I do and they bother me like crazy sometimes - pretty much change every day. I wore contacts since I was about 15 and I've read on some other sites that it could have been from wearing them too much. Well I got approved by my doctors at the Cleveland Clinic to get Lasik so that I wouldn't have to bother with glasses and had it done this past March. It worked well and I can see...sometimes. The dryness just always confuses me and makes me think that I can't see, mainly my sight gets blurry. I wonder how many other people in their 20s have dry eyes? I think my eyes feel the best when I'm outside (especially playing sports - I think the sweating helps a little) but definitely the worst when driving and using the computer... Emerald, I wish I could help you out more - its so frustrating to deal with sometimes.

[Emerald]

I agree, I hardly have heard of anyone our age with this problem, it is frustrating and depressing. Friends, family etc..don't really understand or take 'dry eyes' seriously. Guess it's so common and seems like an easy thing to manage.
Anyhow, I absolutely understand how you feel. Do you have anything over the counter or prescription that have helped you at all? Where did this come from for us as young white non-menopausal women?? I live by the coast, so you'd think the moist air would help, but no. I wonder if it does have to do with wearing contacts too often, why doesn't it go away when you stop wearing them? Many people have worn them for years and years, how does this disease pick and choose ? ughhh

[jenny2008]

i have sjogrens. was diagnosed at age 21. didnt believe it. didnt have dry eyes until i was 32..then everything went to hell!! not fair i know.. i dont understand why somany people are getting autoimmune and so early -in their 20s...

[Emerald]

Yes, so totally unfair. And not being able to find a good way to cope.

[Lacey1]

Another mid-20's white female with dry eyes her. It is soooo frustrating. I got to do all of the hard work with college and a demanding internship to end up with this junk (can you tell I'm upset). Now when life is just about to start to be enjoyable...boom, this starts. It's not fair. I started wearing contacts when I was 12. Had to stop wearing them when I was about 19 because they were just too uncomfortable. Had LASIKS at 21. Was okay for a couple of years and now it's slowly getting worse. So you are not alone it just seems like there are so few of us that the only way we can find each other is on the web. And no one around us really understands, they just say suffer with the pain, go to work, deal with it, others deal with pain. Sorry for my rant, but yeah, we're too young to be dealing with this, it's not fair .

I posted this somewhere else, but thought I'd add it here. Jenny these are my thoughts on the whole autoimmune issues. 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. These are just theories that I've heard from other places.

[ryanross]

even more against the odds, Im a white 20 year old male college student who got dry eyes about a year and a half ago. Just like you, i wore contacts since I was about 16 (I was pretty good with them, never abused them by sleeping in them or anything). I had to stop after going through a week course of antibiotic/steroid eye drops. At the end of this week I woke up and my eyes were bright red, and dry! From this day on a morning hasn't gone by that I don't have to put in drops, no matter what I do. At first I got all the mixed diagnosis, now they just say I have dry eyes from unknown causes. Im thinking it was either a reaction to the drops I used, or some kind of infection that may have damaged something in my eyes. I've been on restasis for over a year, been taking fish oil, and had plugs inserted which has helped the redness and SOME daytime dryness, but I am still no where near contacts, and my eyes are dry EVERY morning. Even with daily lenses, my eyes dry out within the first hour which makes the problem much worse. I know the frustration you girls feel, and I wish you the best of luck with your problems.

[indrep]

I am assuming the eye doctors made notice if birth control pills were being utilized. Most will contribute to dry eyes. Also at 3-5 years of contact lens use patients have the beginning of dry disease. At this stage it may or may not create pain.

Typically no one issue causes dry eyes. Its when the perfect storm of multiple issues come together at the wrong time. Then it becomes a matter of finding the right recipe of treatments to alleviate the pain and restore health to the cornea.

[alisonW]

I believe what Indrep says about contact lens wear causing dryness. It's the #1 complaint of CL wearers and the reason many end up getting LASIK. I posted a link a while ago with a study showing that CL's degrade the miebomian glands and make them much "older" then in people who never wear contacts.

My current eye docs have told me that when wearing contact lenses, according to the manufaturers, they should only be worn for "up to 8 houars" a day. I don't know anyone who wears/wore them that little & I never had an eye doc tell me that I should only wear them for those few hours daily. Most wear them from morning until night (I did) and many sleep in them as well.

Definitely try wearing your glasses more often - I know it's no fun (it took me an entire year to get used to wearing them all the time) but it's much healthier for your eyes.

[Lacey1]

Wow Alison, I never knew that you weren't supposed to wear contacts that long. My doctor never told me that. I used to wear them for 10-12 hours/day. I was really good about removing them before sleep and cleaning, but I guess I was wearing them for too long.

Indrep I was on bc pills for about 5 years, I had never thought about the connection until recently. My symptoms actually seemed to start getting worse when I went off of them, so there may be some hormonal aspect to my dry eyes. The funny thing is, my OD never mentioned that before. I didn't start thinking about that until after reading posts on this site.

[adienich]

I can't really offer suggestions as I'm not too knowledgeable about these things myself but I can imagine at least somewhat how it must feel, though my condition probably isn't as bad as some of yours. I'm a few years older than most of you who posted in this thread but not very old either so it's a bit frustrating to think this might persist for a long time or get worse. I don't know where my problem came either, I never had LASIK or wore contacts so it must be something else.

But I hope all of you will find something that gives relief and makes it easier to cope.

[canndym]

I was 27 when I got dry eyes. I still cannot believe this has happened to me... I have nothing hey could link my dry eyes to as I have never worn contacts, had LASIK, or taken Birth Control or other medications that cause dry eyes. Although I do agree these things all contribute and may cause it for some people sometimes no one knows why. I found the comment about vaccines interesting as I my mother warned me for years not to be vaccinated has we have numerous family members with autoimmune diseases and she feared it would tigger it. I never listened and when my new job pushed me to be vaccianted I agreed. I lost my tear production in one eye that night and woke up in extreme pain, the next week I lost my tear production in the other eye.
I am sure it is autoimmue of some type and I may have had this happen with or without the vaccine I think for some reason it was as previously stated ithe perfect storm that lead to this and I think the vaccine likely made things much worse very quickly.
Now the hard part is to deal with this and all the life changes that come with it and learn to manage it the best you can so you can have the best life possible. Some days this is easier said than done.
Good Luck you all of you I really hope that someday someone can find a treatment that can help restore tear production. (and one that works better than restasis)

[mjszabo]

So I guess I didn't make it clear but by complete opposite of the norm I meant I was a male.. Anyway, yeah I wore my contacts from morning till night every day basically. Especially in high school that would be from 6:30-11:30... way more than the 8-10 hours. My docs also told me the same things about over-wearing contacts and that's what got me searching online for answers. One of the websites I saw awhile back stated that there were tiny hair follicles on your eyes that held a film of water in place over your eyes and wearing contacts too much could degrade them, but I'm not sure how much research has been done on that. I've really just been using restasis - used it for 4 months before my Lasik and have used it every day since (7 months). I know most places say you wont see results when on restasis until after 6-12 months... That just seems ridiculous to me. I hardly use rewetting drops either, I just feel that they only help for a few minutes and then my eyes go back to being blurry or sometimes it causes them to feel more blurry. Any other guys out there?

[Koray]

I got this terrible disease 7 months ago and I am 23 mediterrian male. I had not experienced dry eyes before I had IPL hair removal session.Even every ophthalmologyst I have seen says that reflection IPL lights can not cause dry eyes but surprisingly I had I am not diagnosed with a particular disorder. They said meibomian gland dysfunction or ocular roseacea. I do not believe in them. I think this is because of computer lights, IPL light reflection, artificial lights because I have never used contact lenses or had LASIK. Why do I have dry eyes at 23??? nobody exactly knows. Nowadays I did not use eye drops. I use thilotears gel for night. I do not know the reason but my eyes get worse and worse during nights. I am OK during daytime. My suggestions are to increase your eye blinking, close your eyelids for a while, sleep at least 8 hours , take omega 3 oil, not to use so much eye drops. I also want to mention that all LASIK patients believe in all complications because of LASIK. However, even I have not had LASIK, my visual quality changes time to time and I see blurry, sometimes I see starbursts, halos. I think LASIK causes dry eyes and these symptoms are related to dry eyes not LASIK itself. I hope all of us finds relief

[sazy123]

CONTACT LENSES! been saying it for years. It might not always be the sole cause- but i do think that it starts the process off, making the eyes dryer than people who dont wear contacts, then something else comes along i.e. Lasik, antidepressants etc etc that causes even more dysfunction/inflammation and a visious cylce starts where the inflammation is self sustaining, called the ''loop'', watch this video: http://www.trbchemedica.com/index.ph...=100&Itemid=61

I too am female got dry eye at age 20 after 4 years of contact lense wear (had to stop wearing them), then took some antidepressants and had a weak trial of orthoK lenses (while you sleep). One morning woke up with severe dry eye that has never abated.