Springtime is a beautiful time of year with the birds chirping and flowers beginning to bloom.  However, it can be the worst time of year for dry eye sufferers.  Allergens on top of eyes that are already red and sore can be a nightmare.  

Eye allergy symptoms include itching, watering, redness, and swelling.  Those symptoms would be piled on top of the dry eye symptoms you are already feeling like irritation and fluctuating vision.  Use these tips to soothe your allergy symptoms this spring.

Eliminate the Pollen

Keeping the pollen out of your clothes, hair, skin, and eyes is a great first step in helping your symptoms.  I wrote a blog about this subject recently.  Review it here for some best practices to keep the pollen out of your home, your bed, your eyes, and off of your contact l...

For many of us, Spring not only brings sunshine, warmer weather, and beautiful new flowers, it also brings pollen.  This pollen can cause tons of symptoms like sneezing as well as red, watery, itchy eyes.  Allergens can make us feel miserable.  Here are 3 tips to alleviate your allergy symptoms this spring.

Tip 1: Keep the pollen out

Eliminating the amount of pollen indoors is important in controlling your allergy symptoms.  The fewer irritants you have around your eyes, the less irritated your eyes will be.  When there is so much pollen that it coats our cars with a yellow frost, how do we keep it out:

Wear an outer layer of clothes like a raincoat with a hood.  Leave it in the garage or laundry room.  Don't bring the pollen into your home.

Take a shower before going to bed at ni...

The recent outbreak of the Coronavirus in China is scaring many Americans.  At this time, there are 28 countries with confirmed cases of the virus, including the United States.  Knowing the facts can bring relief and understanding of this sometimes deadly infection.

What is Coronavirus?

The current outbreak of illness is also known as 2019-nCoV.  Coronaviruses, in general, are a large family of viruses that are common in different species of animals such as bats, camels, cows, and cats.  It is rare, but these animal coronaviruses can infect people.  This was also true of the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which had an outbreak in 2003.

What are the symptoms?

The symptoms of Coronavirus are similar to other upper respiratory illnesses.  Fever, shortness of breath, and cough...

At masquerade parties, mystery can be really fun.  Mardi Gras is an awesome time of year to wear a costume, crazy hat, or a mask.  But, I am not a fan of mystery in my clinical practice.  Dry eye disease can often masquerade as something else because there are other diseases that have the same symptoms.  And unfortunately, patients will sometime self-treat the wrong disease for weeks or months before coming in to see me. 

One of the biggest masqueraders of dry eye disease is allergy symptoms.  Here in Louisiana, my patients will blame everything that happens to them on allergies.  And because our winters are fairly mild, something is blooming here year round.  Allergy season can really be any season.   For instance to my patients a headache = allergies, dry cough = allergies, watery eyes ...

What! Dr. T, what are you talking about now? I know you must think I’m crazy (or maybe that I’ve just move back to Syracuse), but today I’d like to talk about snowballs. I’m not speaking of the fluffy white snow packed into a perfect round ball kind of snowballed though. I’m talking about small events that happened one after another that add up to something bigger. 

Several years ago, my husband learned about Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey teaches financial peace. He has a radio show, books and courses all about getting people out of debt and achieving financial peace.  One of his methods is something he calls the debt snowball. 

Debt snowball in a nut shell: 

1) Line up all of your debts from smallest amount to largest amount 

2) Pay the minimum payment to each item, except for the smallest...

Spring is such a nice time of year to enjoy the great outdoors.  However, in many places in the U.S., the pollen counts climb very high this time of year.  Eye allergies can be a burden to your eyes especially if they are already dry.   

If you want to continue wearing your contact lenses, you may have to do a little extra work this time of year.  Here are three steps you can take to keep your eyes happy while wearing contact lenses.  

No. 1) Wraparound Sunglasses 

Wear wraparound sunglasses when you are outdoors. When you are wearing your contact lenses outdoors, it is best to protect your eyes with sunglasses.  In the springtime, wraparound sunglasses will decrease the amount of pollen getting to your eyes. This type of sunglasses has shields, or coverage, on the sides.  So, wind and ...