Is it something I'm doing that's making my eyes dry? 

This is something my patients ask me about every day. Is it something I'm doing that's causing my eyes to be dry?  Well, unfortunately there's something we're all doing that's causing our eyes to be dry.  Right now here in Shreveport, Louisiana it's late summer.   That means that the weather is hot, and there's lots of pollen in the air.

Environment

Sometimes, it is a factor of your surroundings that are causing your eyes to be dry.  One factor to consider is the current season of the year.  Summer tends to have more moisture in the air than winter, but having the air conditioners on full blast and pollen in the air is going to irritate your dry eyes. 

In the winter, heaters and freezing temperatures tend to dry the air both indoo...

Labels.  Companies use the labels on products to bring our attention to something about their product that may make them better or different from their competitor's products.  In the beauty industry, sometimes the labels are misleading and you think you are getting benefits that might not really be important.

 Let's take a look at three common labels placed on beauty brands and find out if they are truly important.

Cruelty-Free

This moniker is meant to indicate that no animal testing has been done on the product.  However, the FDA has not approved a legal definition of the label.  In practice, a brand could use this label whether it is true or not.  

Again, in practice, the label is usually used to indicate that the final product has not been tested on animals.  However, this does no...

Are your eyes so irritated that you can't wear your eye makeup?  My patients complain about this to me all the time.  Why is this happening?

If your eyes are red and watery, they may be sensitive to the makeup you're putting on your lids and lashes.  That makes it difficult to wear makeup day after day. 

Years of wearing and caring for your makeup improperly can lead you to this point in your life.   I want to be the first to reassure you though. This is not your fault.  You didn't know that placing your eyeliner inside the eyelashes was harming your eyes.  You don't know which ingredients in your makeup are toxic to your eyes.  No one taught you how to do this properly and the resources weren't available for you to learn it on your own.

The U.S. Beauty Industry

The beauty industry her...

What Does It Mean to be CLEAN?

CLEAN makeup refers to a brand that is free of toxic ingredients.  Unfortunately, there are toxic ingredients hiding in some of our favorite makeup brands, which leave residues on our lids and lashes and lead to inflammation. 

These toxic ingredients are like anything else that you can think of being toxic, like eating food that is spoiled. If we eat toxic foods, our stomach would become inflamed and it would be toxic to our insides leading to inflammation, discomfort, and bloating.

What happens with toxic ingredients on the eyes?

When toxic ingredients come into contact with your eyes, they become red, swollen, watery, and irritated.  There are 26 ingredients, which are commonly found in makeup that need to be avoided on the eye.  You can download a lis...

Here in the United States, women love mascara.  We use it every day. In fact, studies show that women apply mascara nine times a week.  That's more than once a day.  And, it's the one makeup we just can't live without.  It's very important to us, but most of us don't know how to care for our mascara.  We don't know when to throw these little beauties out.

Why do I need to throw out my mascara tube?

This is not actually a question I get that often from my patients.  But, it's one that I should get, because not many of us women know the answer.  Mascara, just like a jug of milk or a loaf of bread, has a shelf life. There are preservatives in it to keep it fresh, but they only last so long.

Mascara is applied to our eyelashes, and then the wand is put right back into the tube.  We do thi...

Dry eye disease is actually a skin disease, not an eye disease. I wanted to say something a little bit shocking to start off in this blog.   I want to talk about something that maybe you have never heard before. You've been suffering from dry eye for a long time, you've been searching for someone who could tell you what to do about it, but you've never heard that dry eye disease comes from the skin, not the eyes.  This is a new way of thinking about it.

Evaporative Dry Eye

Studies have shown that over 86% of dry eye sufferers have the evaporative type of dry eye.  Evaporative dry eye means not producing enough oils in the tears, which would cover the tear film and prevent the watery part of the tears from evaporating out into the air.

These oils come from oil glands that line the inside...