Dry eye is a common eye condition affecting millions of Americans. It’s marked by a dry, gritty sensation that leads individuals to rub their eyes throughout the day, which can harm eye health.
Ongoing dry eyes can lead to several complications, but eye floaters aren’t one of them. These are two distinct eye conditions that affect different components of the eye’s structure. Dry eyes impact the eye’s corneal surface, while floaters occur because of changes in the vitreous humor.
All About Dry Eyes
Dry eyes develop when your tears can’t provide adequate moisture and lubrication to the eye’s surface. This is typically caused by reduced tear production or increased tear evaporation resulting from an unstable tear film.
The tear film plays an important role in maintaining eye health and comfort. A balance of water, oil, and mucus work together to keep the eyes lubricated and free from irritants.
The tear film becomes unstable when this balance is disrupted, leading to dryness. Without a stable tear film, the eyes are left vulnerable to irritants and infections, compounding the effects of dryness.
There are two main types of dry eyes:
- Aqueous Dry Eye: This develops because the lacrimal glands along the eyelids cannot produce enough tears to keep the eye’s surface properly moisturized.
- Evaporative Dry Eye: This develops when tears evaporate too quickly from the eye’s surface and is most often related to Meibomian Gland Dysfunction (MGD), where the meibomian glands along the eyelids become clogged.
There are several symptoms associated with this condition, some of the most common of which include:
- Blurry vision
- Redness
- Excessive tearing
- Burning sensation
- Light sensitivity
Dry eyes can be caused by several factors including:
- Age
- Environmental conditions like smokey, windy, or dry climates.
- Lifestyle factors like improper contact lens management and prolonged exposure to digital devices.
- Chronic medical conditions and certain medications.
Dry eyes are common and aren’t necessarily a serious condition. However, the condition can cause discomfort and irritation.
Leaving dry eye disease unmanaged can aggravate the condition and increase an individual’s risk of developing serious complications, highlighting the importance of dry eye management.
Visiting your optometrist for a dry eye consultation plays a key role in management of dry eye. These visits help determine the underlying cause of dryness and its severity and allow your optometrist to examine the health of both your eyes and tear film.
Dry eye consultations also allow your optometrist to develop a personalized therapy plan for your dryness to help reduce symptoms and provide long-term relief.
Understanding Floaters
Eye floaters are small, shadowy shapes that drift across your field of vision. They can resemble spots, threads, or squiggly lines.
Floaters are often more noticeable when you’re looking at a plain, bright background, but they tend to become less pronounced over time as the brain learns to ignore them.
Floaters are tiny pieces of protein called collagen that clump together in the vitreous humor. This gel-like substance inside your eye is responsible for maintaining the eye’s shape. Once these proteins clump together, they cast shadows on the retina, which the brain picks up on and interprets as what we call floaters.
Floaters can develop for several reasons, including:
- Aging: As people age, the vitreous humor inside the eye often begins to liquefy and shrink, causing fibers to clump and cast shadows on the retina, seen as floaters.
- Vitreal Detachment: The separation of the vitreous humor from the retina, often related to natural aging, can contribute to the formation of floaters.
- Eye Trauma: Physical injury to the eye can cause changes in the vitreous or bleeding, leading to temporary or permanent floaters.
- Post-Surgery Changes: Sometimes, surgery to correct retinal issues may result in floaters as the vitreous adjusts or scars form inside the eye.
Floaters on their own aren’t inherently a concern. They don’t usually directly affect vision, but they can hinder visual clarity. Floaters are generally harmless, though they are admittedly annoying, and they tend to become more common as we grow older.
However, a sudden increase in floaters, especially if accompanied by flashes of light or loss of peripheral vision, could indicate a more serious condition requiring immediate attention from your optometrist.
The Link Between Dry Eyes & Floaters
There is no direct link between dry eyes and floaters because they affect different components of the eye’s structure.
Dry eye affects the eye’s corneal surface, while floaters are associated with changes within the vitreous humor. The discomfort caused by dry eyes may heighten one’s awareness of floaters, but dry eyes don’t actually cause floaters to appear.
Both conditions may coexist, particularly as we grow older, but one doesn’t necessarily lead to the other.
Managing dry eye symptoms can alleviate discomfort, improve visual clarity, and improve the appearance of floaters, but it won’t eliminate them altogether.
Advanced Therapies for Dry Eyes
While it’s possible to resolve the underlying cause of dry eyes, chronic dry eye has no cure and can only be managed. Management options often include both over-the-counter solutions and advanced therapies.
The key is finding the treatment option most suitable to your ocular needs.
- Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) Therapy: This non-invasive treatment applies controlled light pulses to the eyes and surrounding skin to help unclog meibomian glands along the eyelids.
- Equinox Red Light Therapy: This therapy involves exposing the eyes to low-level red light. This promotes tissue repair and reduces inflammation, improving the ocular surface.
- TearCare Therapy: Using adjustable heated pads on the eyelids, this therapy gently warms and helps target clogged meibomian glands, encouraging the natural secretion of oils.
Schedule an Appointment
Visiting your optometrist for a dry eye consultation allows them to examine your ocular health and tear film to assess the severity of the dryness.
Connect with our team at Texas State Optical to schedule an appointment for your dry eye consultation.
