#207: Bad Habits that Make Dry Eyes Worse
Sometimes my patients share cringe-worthy practices with me in my clinic. These are things they do with their eyes that they don't know are harmful. It's time to address these habits head-on. Let's talk about bad eye habits.
Bad Eye Habit #1) Using Get the Red Out Drops
Using drops that promise to "get the red out" are not helping your eyes. Stop using them! You're merely covering up the problem. If you're constantly using these drops, you're ignoring the warning signs. Redness is your body's way of signaling danger or caution. So why cover it up instead of fixing it?
Those "get the red out" drops squeeze the blood vessels on the front of your eyes closed. Thus, the drops control the redness, but they don't eliminate the inflammation. They're not good for yo
...#199: Your Holiday Shopping Guide, aka your Personal Wish List
The 2023 gift guide for the holidays so that you can get all of your friends with red, sensitive eyes, the best gifts to pamper them this holiday season.
#1) Eyes are the Story Mascara
Now, this is a box of three mini mascara wands. I really love this mascara. It is my favorite. The three mini wands keeps the brush and tube clean. You replace these wands every month. Less bacteria stays in the mascara tube to grow since you dispose of it so often.
Instead of using the big tubes of mascara which you throw out every three months, you get three smaller tubes that you'll replace once a month.
The mascara is formulated with a creamy texture, and it doesn't flake. I find that this mascara lasts all day and it's a nice dark black color. I love it.
#2) twenty/twenty beaut...
#192: Best Tips to Enjoy Summer with Dry Eyes
Summer is a great time of the year to enjoy spending time with your friends and family outdoors. This can be especially challenging for dry eye sufferers since they often are sensitive to wind and sunlight. Let’s discuss three ways to protect your eyes this summer.
#1) Protect Your Eyes
Wearing your sunglasses to protect our eyes from UV rays is important any time of the year. Harmful UV rays have been linked to cataract creation and an increased risk of development of macular degeneration. In the summer, it is extra important to wear sunglasses because there are more hours of daylight.
When you have dry eyes, your eyes tend to be more sensitive to light and to wind. I like to wear sunglasses whenever I'm outdoors year-round, but especially in the summertime. Make sure that your sun...
#185: Best Dry Eye Makeup Bag
This week I'm talking about the best makeup kit for Dry Eye Sufferers. I love this makeup kit from twenty/twenty beauty. It just came out during the 2022 holiday season. It's still available on their website and it is so beautiful and has the greatest products in it.
The most important step to any beauty routine is removing your makeup. If you don't yet have a favorite makeup remover, please download the Guide to Makeup Removers for Sensitive Eyes here.
Let's go over each of these four products and review why they are safe to use when you have dry or sensitive eyes. The makeup kit contains: a mascara, an eyeshadow, and lash and brow growth serum, and a special Hypochlorous cleanser.
#1)Clean Sweep Mascara
This mascara is great for those of us who have dry eyes because there aren...
#184: New Dry Eye Products from 2022
The eye care industry is constantly evolving. There is always research going on to make products better, more tolerable, and longer lasting. This past year, there were 3 new products that hit the market that can significantly affect your dry eye relief. Let's talk about three of the best dry eye products that came to market in 2022.
#1) For your Eyes: Optase MGD Advanced Dry Eye Drop
Optase has been available in the US for a couple of years now. Their preservative-free Dry Eye Intense drop has been a favorite of mine for several years now. However, in 2022, MGD Advanced came to the US market as well.
MGD Advanced has three key ingredients:
- Hyaluronic Acid: binds moisture to the front surface of our eye.
- Trehalose: a naturally occurring compound that prevents drying out, or desicc ...
#183: Best Dry Eye Products for your Valentine
Happy Valentine's Day! Let's talk about your next Valentine's Day gift. I suggest treating your eyes like your Galentine.
You know that I love eyes, right? I talk about them all the time. They are very precious to me, and I take really good care of my eyes. I like to keep them hydrated. I cleanse them. I use the best products in, on, and around them, so that they serve me well. So, I'm going to share some of my favorite products for you so you can think about getting your eyes a Valentine's Day gift.
#1) Hydrate Your Eyes
A new preservative-free artificial tear just hit the market called Ivizia. I love Ivizia because it has two ingredients that are super hydrating.
- Hyaluronic acid: it draws water to your eyes and holds it
- Trehelose: is a compund that protects against dry...
#181: Best Dry Eye Relief Tips of 2022
At the end of each year, I like to review the blog and find the best tips from the whole year and put them together in one place. This year, choosing just 3 was particularly hard. There were so many great things to talk about this year. So, I may end up doing more than Best of episode.
In this blog, I want to focus on the best dry eye relief tips we talked about this year. There were 3 that stood out to me:
- How to get dry eye relief without using eye drops
- Alternatives to Lash Lengthening Mascara
- Redness relief when you have Dry Eyes
These 3 stand out as giving some great Dry Eye relief tips that can be used all year long. Let's Review:
#1) Can you Get Dry Eye Relief without Using Eye Drops (Blog #171)
Even if you hate putting drops in your eyes, or even touching your eyes in ge...
#174: Myth #3: There's NOTHING I can do to Treat my Dry Eyes
This is week three of the 3 myths of dry eye disease. If you've missed the other 2 myths, be sure to check out the other blogs: Myth 1 and Myth 2.
Myth#3: There's nothing I can do to treat my dry eye disease.
If you've been Keeping up with the other myths, then you already know that this myth is wrong. There's so many things you can do to treat dry eyes, and some of them are very new. If you've been following me for a while, then you know that I always talk about the four parts to treat dry eye, which is E Y E S. The EYES method gives four pillars of dry eye disease treatment.
Pillar #1) EYES
Step #1 is to treat your eyes. I like to talk about 4-simple steps to treat your dry eyes:
- Hydrate with a Preservative-free Artificial tear - get the guide here
- Harmonize with a lid and la...
#173: Myth #2 All Eye Drops are the Same
We are talking about three myths about dry eye disease. This blog is dedicated to Myth #2: "All dry eye drops are the same." New patients come in to see me all the time and say, "I've tried everything out there." This basically means that they went to the drugstore, and they picked up Visine and one other generic artificial tear. They tell me they tried them both. Their eyes felt great for about five minutes, but returned to the same level of dryness right away.
Even when talking about products that you can buy at the drugstore, not all dry eye drops are the same. There are 3 types of over-the-counter (OTC) products.
#1) Artificial Tears
In fact, even the ones that you get over the counter are different. You can go to the drugstore and buy artificial tears. If they come in a bottle, th...
#172: Myth #1 - Dry Eye symptoms will go away on their own
Today, I'm going to talk to you about the first of three myths about dry eye disease. Stay tuned over the coming weeks for the other two myths.
Myth #1:
Dry Eye Disease symptoms will just go away on their own.
Truth:
Dry eye is a disease. It's called dry eye disease (DED). And, it's chronic and progressive just like other disease that you might have, like diabetes or high blood pressure.
DED is chronic. You will need to treat it for a lifetime. It doesn't just go away on its own. So it needs to be treated long term. It's best to make simple shifts to your lifestyle to treat it. If you make your treatment regimen a part of your daily care routine (like you do for brushing your teeth) it is easy to do it over your lifetime.
Check out the 4-simple steps of daily dry eye care here. ...
