Tweet
I receive a weekly email newsletter called 'Friday Pearls' written by
Ellen Troyer, Biosyntrx Chief Research Officer. Todays 'Pearl' is titled "Why Women Sometimes Roar" and mentions two women (Laurie McKnight and Rebecca Petris) and their dry eye information websites www.dryeyepain.com and www.dryeyezone.com, respectively.
http://www.biosyntrx.com/pearl.htm
Women Unaware of Menopause/Dry Eye Connection? Surely They Jest!
May 26th 2006
The Society for Women’s Health Research recent dry eye survey revealed that 62% of menopausal and peri-menopausal women experience dry eye symptoms. The society news release, and all the media coverage headlines, focused on the fact that 84% of the menopausal women surveyed supposedly claimed not to have any idea painful dry eyes could be linked to menopause.
Unless the menopausal women surveyed were all from Lancaster County, PA (the heart of Amish country) it's hard to believe a random survey on menpausal women would identify 255 women out of 304 who obviously never read magazines, watch prime time TV, use the Internet to research their health issues, or discuss their menopause with other mid-life female friends. Newsflash! This is not our mother's menopause! We talk openly and often about our menopause and our dry eye symptoms.
I have dry eyes and I'm well qualified to speak for the band of peri-menopausal, menopausal, and post-menopausal women who have wandered like nomads from eye doctor to eye doctor with supposedly “non-specific” complaints of painful dry gritty eyes. We collectively shout that we have always know that some of our dry gritty eye problems could be menopause related. It is our eye doctors who didn't know, nor did most of our eye doctors take our painful dry eye complaints very seriously (we were too often viewed as just another middle-aged menopausal women complaining about something) -until Wall Street deemed “dry eye treatment” a multimillion and now potential billion dollar industry.
To paraphrase a Helen Reddy tune that all dry eye women-of-a-certain age will remember, “We are women hear us roar in numbers too big to ignore.” Cultural anthropologist, Margaret Mead, once said, “There is no more creative force in the world than a menopausal woman with zest.” She made that statement over 30 years ago and it has never been truer than it is today.
Two forceful creative women with zest who immediately come to mind are Laurie McKnight and Rebecca Petris, the women behind www.dryeyepain.com and www.dryeyezone.com, respectively. These motivated dry eye suffering women developed and manage, at their own expense, dry eye information and community web sites, where women, and also men, gather to inform themselves about dry eye syndrome and share information their eye doctors don't tell them about. Our suggestion for The Society for Women’s Health Research Group: the next time you receive unrestricted grant money from an ophthalmic pharmaceutical company (Allergan) to conduct a women’s dry eye survey, seek out informed dry eye internet community women - they tell it like it is.
Unfortunately, dry eye syndrome can be serious, and it's not always easily treated, nor is it always menopause related, as The Society for Women's Health Research implies in their press release. And the expensive pharmaceutical treatment approach puts tremendous financial pressure on our already over-extended government and private health care dollars and should not be immediately prescribed for every dry eye patient. For these reasons, all dry eye sufferers should be, and no doubt are, grateful that an international panel of dry eye medical experts, sponsored by Johns Hopkins University, employed the Delphi consensus approach to establish the eye care professional standard-of-care treatment protocol for dry eye syndrome (now called dysfunctional tear syndrome) based on the disease progression of severity and the medically recognized treatments currently available.
Click on the link to the April 21st 2006 Friday Pearl for the dysfunctional tear syndrome progression of severity and the treatment algorithm proposed by the international delphi panel. http://www.biosyntrx.com/Article.htm?ArticleID=369
Reference:
The 2006 Menopause and Dry Eye Survey by The Society for Women's Health Research [press release]
- Ellen Troyer, MT MA - Biosyntrx Chief Research Officer
The Biosyntrx founders, staff and scientific advisory board wish our Friday Pearl readers a safe and meaningful Memorial Day weekend.
Ellen Troyer, Biosyntrx Chief Research Officer. Todays 'Pearl' is titled "Why Women Sometimes Roar" and mentions two women (Laurie McKnight and Rebecca Petris) and their dry eye information websites www.dryeyepain.com and www.dryeyezone.com, respectively.
http://www.biosyntrx.com/pearl.htm
Women Unaware of Menopause/Dry Eye Connection? Surely They Jest!
May 26th 2006
The Society for Women’s Health Research recent dry eye survey revealed that 62% of menopausal and peri-menopausal women experience dry eye symptoms. The society news release, and all the media coverage headlines, focused on the fact that 84% of the menopausal women surveyed supposedly claimed not to have any idea painful dry eyes could be linked to menopause.
Unless the menopausal women surveyed were all from Lancaster County, PA (the heart of Amish country) it's hard to believe a random survey on menpausal women would identify 255 women out of 304 who obviously never read magazines, watch prime time TV, use the Internet to research their health issues, or discuss their menopause with other mid-life female friends. Newsflash! This is not our mother's menopause! We talk openly and often about our menopause and our dry eye symptoms.
I have dry eyes and I'm well qualified to speak for the band of peri-menopausal, menopausal, and post-menopausal women who have wandered like nomads from eye doctor to eye doctor with supposedly “non-specific” complaints of painful dry gritty eyes. We collectively shout that we have always know that some of our dry gritty eye problems could be menopause related. It is our eye doctors who didn't know, nor did most of our eye doctors take our painful dry eye complaints very seriously (we were too often viewed as just another middle-aged menopausal women complaining about something) -until Wall Street deemed “dry eye treatment” a multimillion and now potential billion dollar industry.
To paraphrase a Helen Reddy tune that all dry eye women-of-a-certain age will remember, “We are women hear us roar in numbers too big to ignore.” Cultural anthropologist, Margaret Mead, once said, “There is no more creative force in the world than a menopausal woman with zest.” She made that statement over 30 years ago and it has never been truer than it is today.
Two forceful creative women with zest who immediately come to mind are Laurie McKnight and Rebecca Petris, the women behind www.dryeyepain.com and www.dryeyezone.com, respectively. These motivated dry eye suffering women developed and manage, at their own expense, dry eye information and community web sites, where women, and also men, gather to inform themselves about dry eye syndrome and share information their eye doctors don't tell them about. Our suggestion for The Society for Women’s Health Research Group: the next time you receive unrestricted grant money from an ophthalmic pharmaceutical company (Allergan) to conduct a women’s dry eye survey, seek out informed dry eye internet community women - they tell it like it is.
Unfortunately, dry eye syndrome can be serious, and it's not always easily treated, nor is it always menopause related, as The Society for Women's Health Research implies in their press release. And the expensive pharmaceutical treatment approach puts tremendous financial pressure on our already over-extended government and private health care dollars and should not be immediately prescribed for every dry eye patient. For these reasons, all dry eye sufferers should be, and no doubt are, grateful that an international panel of dry eye medical experts, sponsored by Johns Hopkins University, employed the Delphi consensus approach to establish the eye care professional standard-of-care treatment protocol for dry eye syndrome (now called dysfunctional tear syndrome) based on the disease progression of severity and the medically recognized treatments currently available.
Click on the link to the April 21st 2006 Friday Pearl for the dysfunctional tear syndrome progression of severity and the treatment algorithm proposed by the international delphi panel. http://www.biosyntrx.com/Article.htm?ArticleID=369
Reference:
The 2006 Menopause and Dry Eye Survey by The Society for Women's Health Research [press release]
- Ellen Troyer, MT MA - Biosyntrx Chief Research Officer
The Biosyntrx founders, staff and scientific advisory board wish our Friday Pearl readers a safe and meaningful Memorial Day weekend.
Comment