Jenks Eye Doctor : Best EyeCare
Speaker 1: Hello. Welcome to Eyecare Insight with Dr. Kyle Tate of Insight Eyecare, your Jenks eye doctor. Today we are in our series about dry eyes. If you’re having any symptoms of dry eyes, such as burning, stinging, or fluctuating vision, you should be looking for a Jenks eye doctor. Reach out to us at Insight Eyecare. We can help meet your dry eyes needs.
We treat patients of all ages inside Eyecare, from newborn babies all the way to great, great grandparents. We offer everything from basic eye exams, contact lens fits of all complexities, eye injuries, treatments for pink eyes, dry eyes, many other eye diseases. Insight Eyecare is located one mile south off of Creek Turnpike at Highway 75 and 117 near the Glenpool Walmart. Located within our clinic is a large optical boutique with over 1000 frames to fit all eye glasses, wants and needs.
We partner with the finest and most technologically advanced lens manufacturers to give you the best vision possible out of your glasses. Our team at Insight Eyecare wants to be your Jenks eye doctor for all your eyecare and eyewear needs. We’ve been working in our series talking about dry eyes. We’ve talked about the signs and symptoms. We’ve talked about what dry eye is and so if you’ve had any of those signs or symptoms, you need to see an eye doctor. Reach out to us. We’re your Jenks eye doctor. We’re here to take care of you.
Today, we’re going to focus on common conditions that dry eye causes. There’s lots of different things that you can be diagnosed with that can cause dry eyes. It can be simple things such as arthritides. Some examples there are rheumatoid arthritis, lupus. There’s something called Sjogren’s Syndrome. Having thyroid problems. Pregnancy is also a very common dry eye. Many different things that induce inflammation in the body that have different hormone changes can cause a dry eye.
The real kicker here is is that many of the most common medications we use have dry eye as a side effect. If you ever hear a side effect that talks about blurry vision, most likely it’s actually blurry vision from dry eyes, not from changing a glasses prescription or hurting the inside of the eye or causing cataracts, things like that. Let’s dive into this a little bit more.
There’s different types of dry eyes as we’ve talked about and let’s focus on inflammatory types. Things like the different arthritides; rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile arthritis, lupus, Sjogren’s Syndrome. Those all induce chronic inflammation on the eyes. When we see a patient that has those signs on their eyes and they have symptoms of dry eyes, we will treat those eyes differently than a patient who comes in with different signs and symptoms.
Treatment programs for dry eye are individualized for every patient. There’s not just a, “Here, use this tear, use this tear, use this tear.” We have great tools and resources available now to treat all the different types of dry eyes. For inflammation caused dry eye, we even have some tests out now that can prove and show us that yes, there is inflammation on the eye. It’s not just looking through a microscope, but it’s actually a yes or no test of certain proteins in the tears when there’s inflammation.
The main treatments is we’ve got to reduce that inflammation. Well, what is inflammation? Inflammation is another word for irritation. It’s the body’s immune system, which is designed to fight an infection coming in and working too hard and actually hurting the body’s own tissue. What it does is it chronically irritates over a long period, the glands that produce different types of tears, most commonly the mucus type of tears. When those aren’t working as well, then you have a dry eye. Irritation leads to dry eye.
Another really common part of inflammatory dry eyes is actually from allergies. Chronic allergies, if we don’t treat them on the eyes, will also irritate the oil glands called the meibomian glands and that will cause a different type of dry eye. For inflammatory types of dry eye, we tend to go more towards steroid eye drops, drops like Restasis. Now we’ve got a new drop called Xiidra to treat dry eyes. We’ve got really good tools. The Restasis drop has been out for about 15 years. It’s very established in how it works. We know how well patients respond. We know what type of patient respond well to it.
Steroids work great as well. Steroid drops do not have the same type of side effects that steroid pills do. Lots of people hear the word “steroid” and they get very gun-shy. That’s understandable. When you are on steroids systemically long term, your body swells. Your face swells. You hold in water. It can cause diabetes. It can cause lots of other things. Well, the eye does have some side effects too. They’re not always noticeable like that. Pressure can go up if you’re on a steroid more than 10 days. If the pressure is too high in the eye, now you’re got glaucoma induced. It can also cause cataracts or speed the development of a cataract.
Steroids are really good to calm down irritation, but if we stay on steroids too long, that’s when we can start having some real problems. As your Jenks eye doctor, we look at the short term on how to really calm things down, but we also look at long term, how we want to help that type of dry eye. That’s usually when we would put patients on a Restasis or now that we’ve got Xiidra, which came out in January of 17, we can see how it helps the eye and where it fits into that equation.
Hormonal changes are a lot harder to treat. They’re not as straight forward as inflammation is. It’s very common that before or after pregnancy, that dry eyes will worsen, especially until we get about three months out from discontinuing breast feeding. That’s when some of the hormones tend to go back to normal and we know it was the dry eye truly just during pregnancy or is it going to be even longer term? There’s not a specific treatment for this type of dry eye, but we just have to treat the signs and symptoms that we can see and feel on the eyes.
Thyroid causes many, many different types of eye conditions. Dry eyes is one of those. A thyroid type dry eye usually is one of two types. It’s either just more your typical dry eye where there’s nothing wrong to cause it. Meaning that the eyes are not unable to close, the eyes are not sticking forward too much. Those are the types that we more worry about, when the thyroid levels are not perfect, is that it can cause swelling behind the eye, which pushes the eye forward, which won’t let the eyelids close. When the eyelids can’t close, well now you have an area that never gets the tears spread over it and it chronically dries out and becomes very, very problematic.
Those patients that have that exposure keratopathy, is the scientific word we would call that, that dry eye from the eyelids not closing. Those patients are the ones that are some of the most miserable and now we’ve got to treat with a lot thicker drops. Something that they can put in like a gel, that will last longer and if it’s severe, we may even use an ointment. One that will last for hours and hours before they need to use it again.
Let’s talk about different types of medications in causing dry eye. America has really high use of blood pressure medications. A lot of us don’t get exercise the way we should. We don’t take care of our heart health. We also have excess fat tissue, which causes that blood pressure to raise. Well, many blood pressure medications are focused at helping to get fluid off the body or out of the blood. Well, those also have side effects of not letting the eyes produce as much fluid, so causing a dry eye.
Some of the other medications that are very common that cause a dry eye, especially here. It’s springtime in Oklahoma when we’re recording this, is antihistamines. Antihistamines dry the entire body out, including the eyes. Now you’ve got a patient who already has allergies, which can cause a dry eye and we’re using a medication to treat that dry eye. As far as a pill like a Benadryl, Claritin, Zyrtec, that also then dries the eyes out.
We have to think about that when patients are coming in presenting with allergies. Not to pick on just the high blood pressure medication, but there’s hundreds and hundreds of medications which cause a dry eye. Those medications are all prescribed for a good reason. That’s not something we want to take out. Remember, if any of this stuff sounds like you or your case, we’re your eye doctor in Jenks. Come see us if you are noticing anything like this.
Quick summary, the calming conditions and causes that can cause dry eyes, different types of systemic conditions. Everything from different inflammatory arthritides, thyroid, pregnancy, side effects from blood pressure, many other types of medications, and then allergies are a repeating common trend in dry eye causes. If you’ve experienced any of these symptoms, please reach out to us at Insight Eyecare. Our mission is to improve every life, every encounter. That means we want all of our patients to have healthy and comfortable eyes and the clearest vision possible.
We want you to be able to view and enjoy your life. When you think you need a Jenks eye doctor, come see us at Insight Eyecare. Our welcoming staff, state-of-the-art facility, advanced eyecare diagnostic equipment, and eyeglasses boutique are here to help you out. We have thousands of contact lenses in stock to meet the needs of any patient. As your Jenks eye doctor, remember, along with just this dry eye, we treat near sightedness, far sightedness, astigmatism, cataracts, glaucoma, allergies, foreign material removal, macular degeneration, infections, many, many, many more. Bring us your red, gritty, scratched, sandy, burning eyes with blurry vision. We want to help out. Thank you. Have a great day.