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...

Based on the research provided by the Tear Film and Ocular Surface (TFOS) Society, there are 4-simple steps all dry eye patients should take on a daily basis to alleviate their dry eye symptoms. 

In 2017, TFOS published a report called the Dry Eye Workshop that utilized the expertise of 150 clinicians and scientists around the world.  These doctors compiled all of the available research and wrote a consensus on how to treat dry eyes.  

The TFOS DEWS2 report advises using 4 steps to care for your dry eyes daily.  No matter if you have just been diagnosed with dry eyes or you have had them for years, there is a 4-step treatment process to get relief fast.  I recommended these 4 steps to all of my patients to do at home for the maintenance of healthy eyes and eyelids. 

Utilizing these 4 s...

Best Eye Makeup Remover for Sensitive Eyes.

There are five types of eye makeup removers. You will want to choose one or more of them depending on your personal skin type and lifestyle.  Then, you just need to make sure there aren't any toxins in the ingredient list.  I review the reasons to wear CLEAN or toxin-free makeup in this blog. 

The 5 categories of eye makeup removers are: micellar water, oil-free, oil-based, clothes, and wipes. Some of these are best for heavy makeup wear and some are better for light wear.  Some of these are better for dry skin, oily skin, contact lens wear, and busy lifestyles.  Keep reading on to find out which would best suit your eyes.  And, don't hesitate to think that you may want to have multiple types around for different situations like special occasio...

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...

Dry eyes have changed a lot during the pandemic. There are 3 things that have caused dry eye symptoms to worsen for patients who already have it.  Let's explore what has made dry eye worse during the COVID-19 pandemic and what we can do to counter it!

 #1) Masks

Everyone is wearing a mask for some part of the day.  You're breathing and some of this air is going up into your eyes.  All-day long, or as long as you have your mask on, the air is being directed upwards from your nose or mouth into your eyes.  A lot of my patients complain about their eyes feeling drier now than they had before.

In addition, we are avoiding touching our eyes and faces, so you may not be putting artificial tears into your eyes as often as you would like.  Especially, if you are out and about, you may not be u...

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...