do your eyes water for no apparent reason in
this video i'm going to talk about the top five conditions that may cause your eyes to
water and what you can do about it let's focus in hey howdy everybody i'm dr neal guymon dr eyeguy
with the show that focuses on keeping your eyes the healthiest and your vision the clearest i make
a video every week to give you the tips tricks and tools to keeping your eyes the best if that's
something you're interested in subscribe so you don't miss any future videos otherwise let's focus
on those weeping eyes now these are the top five most common conditions that i see in the clinic
that may cause your eyes to water there's about a million different causes but these are the
top five most common number one is dry eyes now usually when i see a patient and they tell me that
their eyes have been watering and then i tell them right back hey your eyes are dry they look at me
like i'm a crazy loony bin and that i didn't even listen to a word that they said but it's true
sometimes eyes watering or that watery eye is a protective mechanism that kicks in when your eyes
may be dry your eyes are dry it sends the message back to the brain the brain responds by flooding
the tears under the eyes to compensate and a lot of times it's more tears than the eyes can handle
and they'll tend to weep off the side causing you to want to wipe away the tears a lot one thing
that i see associated with this dry eye in the clinic is a lot of times people will get something
called keratitis or inflammation of the cornea right on the surface of the eye it's pretty much
little versions of dry patches a lot of times what i say is sometimes you'll get these dry patches on
your hands if your hands are really dry and you'll go to put lotion on them same thing on the eye
you can get dry patches on the surface of the eye and your eyes and brain will want to compensate by
dumping more tears on there to coat the cracks and dry patches of that eye now unfortunately dry eyes
can be very complicated to treat because there's a lot of different reasons a lot of different
conditions and root causes to dry eye that sometimes can be overwhelming at what treatment
will work the best for you now as a baseline baseline when you're talking about dry eyes you
want to be drinking enough water plenty of water you do want to be using those over-the-counter
artificial tears like i said if you get dry patches on your knuckles you want to put lotion on
there if you get dry patches on your eyes you want to put artificial tears on there further things
that you can do is definitely make sure that you're up on your omega-3s even if it's omega-3
supplements eating your fish if you want to eat fish you can use a humidifier to make sure that
the air around you is nice and moist now i plan on making future videos about dry eyes that goes
more into depth about certain dry eye conditions and treatments so make sure you subscribe for
that in the future number two is allergies now what's tricky about this is some people may
not even notice that they have allergies that are causing their eyes to water they might not
have the runny nose or sneezing or the typical allergy symptoms but they might have just a little
low-grade allergy just enough to irritate the eyes and make the eyes water now in the clinic a lot
of times i'll pull people's eyelids down and on the inside of the eyelids you'll have these tiny
little bumps called papillae that will show up if you're experiencing any allergies and these little
bumps will secrete the chemical histamine that can make your eyes red and itchy and also cause some
inflammation which will eventually lead the eyes to water so for this one the best thing you can do
is try and avoid the allergen if you know what the allergen is sometimes people don't even know what
is irritating their eyes if you don't know what the allergen is the best thing you can do is get
your hands on an allergy eye drop there are really good over-the-counter allergy eye drops the best
one for me that i usually recommend to patients is called pat a day and i'll put a link down below
so you can check that out but works really well they have one drop versions where you can just
put a drop in the morning works throughout the day also two drop a day so morning and night also
works really well number three is something called blepharitis blepharitis is the inflammation of the
eyelids you'll specifically see this inflammation right around the base of the eyelashes in fact a
lot of times you can see a lot of flakes or gunk that are built up on the base of the eyelashes
and this may cause the rim or the margin of the eyelid to get red and inflamed and irritated now
sometimes if you have those flakes the flakes themselves will fall into the eye and cause the
eyes to be irritated in water now the chronic condition of this blepharitis is you have bacteria
they're sitting right on the base of the eyelashes and they'll produce these toxins and these toxins
bacteria poop will sit on the surface of the eyelashes eyelids and a lot of the toxins will
get on the surface of the eye this will in turn cause the eyelids to become more inflamed more
red make the eye more irritated more inflamed and make the eye water blepharitis can actually be a
chronic cycle and it's sometimes really tricky to break the cycle and treat now the baseline there
is you want to be able to keep your eyelids and eyelashes as clean as possible sometimes you'll
have doctors that will recommend applying baby shampoo to actually wash your eyelashes
what i found that works the best for home maintenance of blepharitis is actually to clean
the eyelids with specific blepharitis or eyelid wipes probably the most common one that you'll
see out there is called ocusoft and really simple if you can do it twice a day the better but at
least at night time go in and clean your your eyelids and your eyelashes out really clean down
to the margin you can even go up further up to the eyebrow just to try and get all those flakes
off any bacteria or allergens that got caught into the eyelashes if you can keep those clean then
you'll have the best chance of breaking the cycle of this blepharitis hey if you're finding value of
this video hit that like button for me by hitting the like button it tells youtube that these
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me okay number four that i see in the clinic is a blocked tear duct now we have little tiny opening
holes on the inside corner of our eyelids called puncta the puncta is actually what drains the
tears out of her eye and if you can imagine if you have a blocked tear duct or a block drain then
tears will not flow down that drain and said there will be forced out the side of the eye or down
the middle now a lot of you can relate to this they have kids a really common thing that you'll
see in infants newborn babies is they'll have a blocked tear duct and they'll constantly get this
this buildup of tears in the corner of their eyes sometimes there'll be a slight infection in there
with some gunk and mucus in there and it's just because that that tear duct is blocked in there
and it's not allowing tears to flow and flush the eye out so if you're experiencing something
like this the best thing you can do is actually massage the drainage tube that's on the corner
of the eye if you can get right in the corner of the eye and kind of massage it especially if
you can apply heat a little bit that will allow or hopefully move any kind of drainage that's
in the corner of that that eye or the drainage tube down there and kind of help it flush it out
now sometimes people get an infection in there may need or may require an antibiotic an ointment or
a drop that can help clear that infection that's in the puncture now sometimes you can just be
born with a narrow tubing or a narrow drain and so you'll have eyes that water for no apparent
reason maybe it's just because you have a narrow drain that can't handle all of your tears on your
eye now there's something that's called punctal irrigation where we can actually squirt saline
solution through that drainage to try and get rid of whatever block might be there that's holding
up all the tears number five that i usually see in the clinic is general problems with the eyelids
themselves now the eyelids play a vital role in keeping your tears on your eyes moving them in the
right direction if you have something wrong with the eyelids they droop they don't sit right up on
the eyeball then your eyelids won't be able to do their job in moving the tears in the right place
now there's something called ectropion where the eyelid the bottom eyelid may droop out a little
bit make it loose and lax and droop out now i said before there's little drainage holes on the inside
corner of the eyelid and if that eyelet is drooped out the tears won't find that drain and instead
will leak out the side of the eyelids on the other side now on the flip side there's something called
entropion where the eyelids will actually curl into the eye and what happens there is sometimes
the eyelashes on the on the eyelid will be pointing in towards the eyeball and kind of rub
and scrape and poke on the eye causing it to be irritated and causing that reflex tearing to
happen causing your eyes to water another thing if you have just really relaxed lids or maybe not
blink the whole way sometimes if you only do this half blink you'll get a section of the eye that's
just constantly exposed to the air and will dry out really quickly now if you have that dryness
of the eye it will cause the eyes of water now you can concentrate on doing eyelid blink exercises
there's actually eyelid blink exercises out there does help some people kind of funny to tell people
to you know work on exercising their eyelid blinks but they are out there to kind of keep your eyes
blinked to coat the whole eye with entropy and where the eyelashes are open on the eye you can
actually go in there and pluck the eyelashes out to reduce the eye watering you can also if it's
really bad you can get those eyelash follicles destroyed so it doesn't grow any more eyelashes
with ectropion where the eyelid is drooped out a lot of times you're going to need surgery to
bring that eyelid back up onto the surface of the eyeball there's about a billion different
things that may cause the eyes to water i could literally make this list with a hundred things on
it but this video would have been two hours long but these are the top five things that i see in
the clinic honorable mentions would be obviously foreign body if there's something in the eye cause
your eyes to water conjunctivitis pink eye will usually make your eyes water then obviously
there's a lot of normal things that may cause your eyes to water cutting onions those onions
chemicals will spark your eyes to water yawning can stimulate the nerve that causes your eyes to
produce some tears and flood the eyes with tears if you're having eye watering and not as sure
exactly what is causing it it's just best to go in and see your eye doctor he'll be able to
tell you exactly what may be causing your eyes to water and what you can do about it hey thanks
for watching the video everybody comment below if you've had any experiences with these random
episodes of eye watering and again i'm dr eyeguy committed to looking out for you and your eyes
stay focused and i'll see you in the next video you
