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Fellow Dry Eye Sufferers,
I had RK 18 years ago. Since that time I have had dry irritated eyes. Doctors have suggested all sorts of drops. For me, these drops never really made things better except perhaps during the short time that the extra liquid was in there. I have tried to add drops into my eyes every time my eyes felt dry. This results in me adding drops every 5-10 minutes. After doing this for a while, it seems that my eyes are much worse feeling than before I started this process.
The only time that my eyes seem to function properly is when I am eating. I can feel little squirts of water entering my eyes every time I swallow liquids and I chew etc. Every thing is great….I forget about the eyes…..and then about 10-15 minutes later every thing is back to its irritating normal state. So it seems that my dry eye problem could be helped with more water.
Here is my theory about how MY eyes seem to work. It seems that my eyes produce a “baseline” quantity of water. This is the minimum that ensures that the eyes have enough water when sleeping etc. I realize reading this board, that some folks don’t even have this. When the eyes are open there is a mechanism to squirt water in tiny increments when the eye surface sends a signal that it doesn’t feel good…this is all done automatically. In my case, this mechanism has been disabled by the surgery and the disruption of nerve signals. Without this little extra “squirts of water” my eyes have to limp along on the “baseline” quantities.
What I have been trying to work on is a method of making those little squirts of water some other way. I know that the following things produce some water or tears:
1. Eating. Unfortunately, I can’t eat constantly without negative results.
2. Yawning: Seems to produce tears but it takes a lot of effort.
3. Sometimes if I see something that makes me emotional, I will get tears to well up. This is not easy to replicate.
4. Some forms of pain such as a pimple on the nose etc. Can’t hardly expect to be pinching a pimple on my nose to relieve dry eye.
There are probably more of these. The tantalizing thing is that there are some methods of triggering the tear glands to inject water, but we do not seem to be in control of this. I know this is a shot in the dark but I wonder if there is any way that one could retrain these glands so that they respond to different stimulus. If Pavlov’s dog could make saliva by hearing a bell, maybe we could train ourselves to get our tear glands to make a little squirt every time we did something unrelated, like blink, or breath deeply for example. I realize this is kind of far fetched, but maybe there is something possible.
I have tried to get good at creating small tear squirts by doing what I call a “mini yawn”. What I do is mentally make myself yawn, but instead of going the full route of opening my mouth etc, I kind of only do the first part. I get a little squirt of liquid in the eyes and that helps for a minute or two. The problem with this is that it takes a lot of concentration to do this. I don’t know if the mechanical act of yawning is what causes the liquid or if it is just one of the parts of the reflex. If there was a way of somehow training oneself to subtract out all the mouth opening and just mentally squirt the water, maybe with enough mental training one could make ones eyes get little squirts almost subconsciously.
I realize all of this probably sounds like a bunch of rambling nonsense, but maybe there is an answer here somewhere. I would love to hear other’s ideas on this (except for the obvious one that I am going insane).
Richard.
I had RK 18 years ago. Since that time I have had dry irritated eyes. Doctors have suggested all sorts of drops. For me, these drops never really made things better except perhaps during the short time that the extra liquid was in there. I have tried to add drops into my eyes every time my eyes felt dry. This results in me adding drops every 5-10 minutes. After doing this for a while, it seems that my eyes are much worse feeling than before I started this process.
The only time that my eyes seem to function properly is when I am eating. I can feel little squirts of water entering my eyes every time I swallow liquids and I chew etc. Every thing is great….I forget about the eyes…..and then about 10-15 minutes later every thing is back to its irritating normal state. So it seems that my dry eye problem could be helped with more water.
Here is my theory about how MY eyes seem to work. It seems that my eyes produce a “baseline” quantity of water. This is the minimum that ensures that the eyes have enough water when sleeping etc. I realize reading this board, that some folks don’t even have this. When the eyes are open there is a mechanism to squirt water in tiny increments when the eye surface sends a signal that it doesn’t feel good…this is all done automatically. In my case, this mechanism has been disabled by the surgery and the disruption of nerve signals. Without this little extra “squirts of water” my eyes have to limp along on the “baseline” quantities.
What I have been trying to work on is a method of making those little squirts of water some other way. I know that the following things produce some water or tears:
1. Eating. Unfortunately, I can’t eat constantly without negative results.
2. Yawning: Seems to produce tears but it takes a lot of effort.
3. Sometimes if I see something that makes me emotional, I will get tears to well up. This is not easy to replicate.
4. Some forms of pain such as a pimple on the nose etc. Can’t hardly expect to be pinching a pimple on my nose to relieve dry eye.
There are probably more of these. The tantalizing thing is that there are some methods of triggering the tear glands to inject water, but we do not seem to be in control of this. I know this is a shot in the dark but I wonder if there is any way that one could retrain these glands so that they respond to different stimulus. If Pavlov’s dog could make saliva by hearing a bell, maybe we could train ourselves to get our tear glands to make a little squirt every time we did something unrelated, like blink, or breath deeply for example. I realize this is kind of far fetched, but maybe there is something possible.
I have tried to get good at creating small tear squirts by doing what I call a “mini yawn”. What I do is mentally make myself yawn, but instead of going the full route of opening my mouth etc, I kind of only do the first part. I get a little squirt of liquid in the eyes and that helps for a minute or two. The problem with this is that it takes a lot of concentration to do this. I don’t know if the mechanical act of yawning is what causes the liquid or if it is just one of the parts of the reflex. If there was a way of somehow training oneself to subtract out all the mouth opening and just mentally squirt the water, maybe with enough mental training one could make ones eyes get little squirts almost subconsciously.
I realize all of this probably sounds like a bunch of rambling nonsense, but maybe there is an answer here somewhere. I would love to hear other’s ideas on this (except for the obvious one that I am going insane).
Richard.
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