More women than men suffer from a diagnosis of dry eye that often feels as if there is something gritty in the eye and may leave the sufferer at increased risk of infection
Your tears are made of three different layers of fluid secreted from three different glands around your eyes; you can influence the quantity and quality of your tears and thus reduce your potential for dry eye
Dry eye is triggered or aggravated by vitamin deficiencies, low omega-3 and environmental factors such as smoke, wind, dry air and screen time
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By Dr. Mercola
Although many accept declining eyesight as a part of natural aging, it is really more of a side effect of our modern lifestyle. Aging does not automatically equate to failing vision, cataracts or dry eyes, provided you’ve properly nourished your eyes through the years. Unfortunately, statistics demonstrate that many Americans are suffering the effects of years of poor lifestyle choices. In people over age 40:1
24.4 million people have cataracts
2.7 million have glaucoma
4.2 million suffer impaired vision
4.88 million suffer dry eye
The risk of developing dry eye increases with age and women appear to suffer from the condition more than men.2 You may have experienced some of the symptoms of dry eye after having been outside in windy conditions or a long day wearing contact lenses. These symptoms may include a scratchy sensation over your eye or feeling as if there is something in your eye. It may feel as if your eyelids are heavy, be more difficult to blink or you may experience blurred vision.
The medical term for dry eye is keratoconjunctivitis sicca. Left untreated, the condition may lead to serious damage to your eyes. In the past, dry eye was treated by adding moisture, such as normal saline. Today, there is a better understanding of the complexity of some of the substances in your tears and how they function in your eye.3
Three Layers to a Teardrop
There are several layers to the tears your eyes produce naturally, and up to 1,500 proteins,.4 Tears are actually a complex mix of mucous, water, fatty oils and different proteins designed to keep the surface of your eye smooth and protected from environmental pathogens and irritants. You have three different types of tears and each has a different chemical mix produced by three different glands.5
Meibomian glands produce an outer, oily layer that keeps your tears from evaporating too quickly, thus enabling the tears to remain on your eye and protect the organ.
Lacrimal glands produce the middle layer of watery tears and water-soluble proteins that help to nourish the cornea and conjunctiva, or mucous membrane covering the entire front of the eye and inside of your eyelids.
Goblet cells produce the innermost mucin layer of tears or glycoprotein component of mucus. This binds the water from the aqueous layer produced by the lacrimal glands to ensure your eye remains wet.
When your eye is healthy, a continuous bath of basal tears will cover and protect your cornea. This is the clear, dome-shaped outer surface of the eye over the pupil.6 Every time you blink, these basal tears nourish the cells of the cornea. The second type of tear is called reflex tears. These are produced in reflex to an irritant in the eye, or exposure to external irritants such as wind, smoke or onions.7
The third type of tear is the one you may be most familiar with: emotional tears. These are produced after a powerful emotional stimulation and may have higher amounts of proteins than other teams. However, science has not yet conclusively demonstrated this.
This process produces approximately 1.2 ml of tears each day and half a liter each year.8 When insufficient tears are produced, or the composition changes, it can affect both the health of your eye and your vision. Eyesight may be affected as adequate amounts of tears on the surface of your eye affect how your eye focuses light and color.
Your Tears Serve Several Functions
One function of your tears is to keep your eyes moist and functioning optimally. When your eyes become dry, the conjunctiva that covers the eye and inside of your eyelids also becomes dry. This is the condition called keratoconjunctivitis sicca.9 Tears serve other functions as well.
Emotional, or weeping, tears are formed when you experience great joy or sorrow. Actually, any powerful emotional response may generate tears, including anger. Women often cry more than men. According to one estimate, women cry on average 5.3 times per month compared to men who cry 1.4 times per month.10 However, the gender differences may also be related to cultural differences as Western cultures give greater freedom to women than they do to men to cry.
This emotional shedding of tears has healing power as it helps to release powerful emotional triggers, including stress, anger, sadness, grief, and joy.11 These emotional tears actually contain stress hormones and other toxins that accumulate during stress. William Frey, biochemist, and director of the Psychiatry Research Laboratories at St. Paul-Ramsey Medical Center commented on his research into the biological role emotional tears play in health, saying:12
“What now needs to be done is a study of the actual crying behavior of people with stress-related illnesses. People say they feel better after crying, and our data show this is so. Crying is an exocrine process.
That is a process in which a substance comes out of the body. Other exocrine processes, like exhaling, urinating, defecating and sweating, release toxic substances from the body. There’s every reason to think crying does the same, releasing chemicals that the body produces in response to stress.”
Crying may also stimulate your body to produce endorphins, “feel good” hormones to help balance your emotional state.13 Even when the emotional or situational problem persists, crying may help you feel better and improve your decisions about that situation.
What Triggers Dry Eye?
Dry eye can result from an immediate environmental stimulus, such as a windy day, or can turn into a chronic condition if there’s a problem with your tear glands. There are two main types of chronic dry eye:14
Deficiency: triggered by an inadequate production of tear volume
Evaporative: more common, this condition is triggered by an acceleration of tear evaporation due to poor-quality tear production
There are health conditions that affect both the quality of the tears your body produces and a number of tears produced. Health conditions that may trigger one of the two reasons for chronic dry eye include:15