My patients and some of my students in my Alleviate Dry Eye course often ask me about how to express their meibomian glands.  You may have been told to do this by your own doctor.  Or, maybe you have read about it or heard about it from a friend.  A lot of folks are still confused as to how to do it.  

If you've been following my blog for a while, then you know I talk about doing four simple steps to take care of our dry eyes daily.  To review, the first step is hydrate, so using an artificial tear. The second step is to cleanse your lids and lashes. The third step is to heat your lashes, and right after that heating you often want to express those meibomian glands, so we're going to talk about that. The fourth step is to take a dry eye supplement. I always recommend HydroEye to my patien...

Women want to have beautiful eyelashes.  Sometimes, they even want to wear eyelash extensions to have a more glamorous look.  My patients ask me a lot of questions about wearing eyelash extensions.

Often, my patient's eyelashes aren't as long and glamorous as they used to be. Dry eye occurs when the meibomian glands, which are the oil gland in our lids, aren't working properly. The glands aren't producing the oil that coats the tear film.  The oils also condition the eyelashes and makes them stronger. 

Since many of my patient's lashes are short and tend to be brittle, they are always asking me about wearing extensions.  At this time, there is only one eyelash extension I can say yes to. 

The problem is that a lot of the lash extensions on the market these days will do harm to your dry ...

What do you do if you have a stye? On last week's blog, we talked about what a stye is, and why they were so much more common during our time of self-quarantine during the COVID-19 shutdown.  Eye doctors across the country commented on multiple panels and blogs that that is the infection that they noticed the most from patients during self-quarantine.  If you missed that blog don't worry, you can go back here to review what a stye is.

Now, if you have a stye, what can you do to treat it? There are a number of things you can try at home to get it to heal before going to your doctor's office.  Here is a list of the best practices:

KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF

Avoid touching your face or eyes as much as possible.  Avoid touching the stye itself.  In the long run, you will just irritate it more.   I...

It's the Christmas season as I write this.  We are all running around trying to find the perfect gift for everyone on our list.  We want to make sure the gift is personal and not gonna end up in the re-gifting bin. 

I have a friend that loves candles.  She has them lit all over her house.  It always smells like a bakery at her house.  When you go from room to room there is a different cookie or food scented candle in each one.  There is usually apple, sugar cookie, and gingerbread.  No wonder, I'm always hungry when I'm over there. 

The week of Thanksgiving, I made a list of the ultimate gift-giving guide for 2019.  I put on it some of the best eye care products I've come across.  I feel like I have tried them all of the eye treatment products at this point.  I have listed over a half do...

The holidays are upon us.  For some of us, this news feels us with happiness and joy.  For others, it fills us with stress and anxiety.   I hate to admit to you that I am definitely the latter of these two types of people.  It is not that I don't like Christmas.  I love the decorations, parties, food, and gatherings.  I just have stress about the gift-giving.  #truth

Let's face it, there are some people in our lives that are hard to give to.  And, I'm sure you have more people on your list each year.  The growth of my list always seems exponential.  How does that happen?

Let me present to you the 2019 Gift Giving Guide.  You will find something on it for everyone.  Even if you don't think that your friends and family have dry eyes, we all need to take care of our eyes.  Take care of your...

Several years ago, I began to struggle with dry eyes.  This was at a time when I lived in a very dry climate, and I wore contact lenses most of the time. My eyes would get dry towards the end of my workday, and I couldn’t wait to take them off when I finally got home.   

Most days a couldn't stand to wear eye makeup.  I knew there must be a better way to live.  I couldn't go on with the feeling of wanting to claw the contact lenses from my eyes before 5 pm. 

I began to research how to keep moisture in my eyes longer.  I played around and tried every contact lens and contact lens cleaning solution on the market.  I definitely have my favorites from that experiment, but there was still something missing.   

Since then, I’ve read articles, attended lectures, and even written a book on the...

1. Sleeping with it

Tip 1: Dry Eye Treatment should include  Eye Lid Treatment