What is dry eye?

Dry eye is a very common eye condition that can affect anyone at any age, although its mostly more common in older aged people. It is caused by a problem with our tears, and can develop if you don’t produce enough tears, the tears aren’t of the right quality or if they don’t spread across the front of your eye properly. It can make your eye feel dry, scratchy, irritated and uncomfortable.

There are two main types of dry eye:

Evaporative dry eye – where the tears evaporate too quickly.
Aqueous deficient dry eye – where there are not enough watery tears being produced.

Dry eye often affects both eyes but sometimes one eye is affected more than the other. It can make you feel you have something in your eye, like an eyelash or a piece of grit, even when there is nothing there. It can make your vision slightly blurry, usually only for short periods of time. The blurriness usually gets better on its own or when you blink.

There are three main ways to help your dry eye:

making the most of your natural tears
using artificial tears (eye drops)
reducing the draining away of the tears.

If your eyes feel uncomfortable and irritated, or you feel like there is something in your eye all the time, then you should tell your GP, optometrist or ophthalmologist.

What is dry eye?

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