Jenks Eye Doctor : High Quality Service
Dr. Kyle Tate: Welcome to Eyecare Insights with Dr. Kyle Tate, your Jenks eye doctor. Today we are in our series about dry eye. If you are having any symptoms of burning, stinging or fluctuating vision, you should be looking for a Jenks eye doctor. Reach out to us Insight Eyecare.
We treat patients of all ages from newborn babies down to great, great grandparents. We offer everything from basic eye exams, contact lens fits of all complexities, we treat eye injuries, pinkeye, dry eyes, many, many others. Insight Eyecare is located one mile south off of Creek Turnpike highway 75 and highway 117, near the Glenpool Walmart. Located within our clinic is a large optical boutique with over 1000 frames to fit all eyeglasses 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 eye care and eye wear needs. Tonight, we’re in our dry eye series and we’re on the second part of what are the steps of treatment for dry eyes? We spent the last podcast talking just about artificial tears. That’s a very broad subject. If you’ve ever been to a pharmacy looking for an artificial tear, you see an entire wall that you walk up to that’s confusing. The prices are different. This has this, this has that. Your doctor should be giving you a little explanation as far as what to do there.
Today we’re going to be talking a little bit more about lipid deficiencies. Remember that means there’s not enough oil in the tear film. What we need to do is we need to get those oil glands that are located in the eyelids, both the upper and lower lid, have about 100 glands. There’s actually a few more in the upper lids than there are the lower lids. Every time you blink, that blink puts just a little bit of pressure that pushes on those glands, gets that oil flowing into the tears. As a reminder, that oil’s job is to keep the tears from evaporating and keep that tear film stable. That’s a key to having comfortable eyes that don’t burn or sting and then having stable vision that’s not blurry or fluctuating. If you’re having any of those symptoms or this sounds like anything that you’re dealing with, come see us at Insight Eyecare, your Jenks eye doctor.
Other than artificial tears, the first step that we’re going to do, in a very mild case is going to be using warm compress. Now, people hear that and most of the time they think, let’s use a hot rag, maybe put it in the microwave when it’s wet to get that on the eyes. There is some truth in that. That helps a little bit but what our studies have found, we actually need those glands to get to about 105 degrees. That doesn’t sound like a lot but that’s warming them six degrees above baseline. You’ve got layer after layer of tissue that we’ve got to get that heat through so it becomes a little harder than it sounds like because these glands are actually on the backside of the eyelid. If possible, we could just flip the lid and apply a little heat and they’d flow right out but that wouldn’t be very safe due to the mucous membrane there.
What we actually want to do, one of the most common things you can get around your house is get a sock, fill it full of uncooked rice and just throw that in the microwave. You want to tie the end up so the rice doesn’t go everywhere. We don’t want to make a big mess and now the spouse is angry at us because the kitchen’s all dirty but just rice, in a sock, uncooked. Throw it in the microwave, heat it up. That will actually hold the heat longer than water. It holds it in. It actually delivers moist heat. It pulls moisture out of the air and then helps deliver that heat to the skin of the eyelid. Then you can just go lay down in the bed or the couch, take about a 10 minute nap with your rice sock and let that heat soak in. That heat is designed to soak in and thin the oils so they start flowing better. That’s the name of the game. We’ve got to get the oils flowing better in this type of dry eye. Those have some help.
Doing a warm compress will help but not as much as some of the other things. Early in practice, when we first knew this was happening, we’d tell people, “Go get this many milligrams of omega three.” It got to be such a buzzword, omega threes in our society, it was almost as hard as picking what tear’s right for you. There’s all these different types. The EPA, DHA, all this stuff you’re trying to worry about and figure out how many milligrams.
When I was young in practice, when we would tell patients go get X milligrams, usually about 2000 milligrams a day, it was not as effective as we needed it to be. I’m very thankful that someone addresses this. A bunch of eye doctors got together and made a study and figured out what is the best thing to get these oil glands flowing. The formula they came up with is now sold in a pill called “Hydro Eyes”. We sell them at our clinic at your Jenks eye doctor, Insight Eyecare. It’s just four small pills you take a day. They’re actually coated to swallow very easy. We rarely have people with any stomach issue on these like some of the older fish oils would give a really nasty fish taste and some unpleasant burping gas that would come out.
These Hydro Eyes are very effective. I have many, many patients on these who feel like their lives have changed once they got on the pills. They do take about two months to work but once they work, the eyes are more comfortable, the vision’s more stable. The best thing is when we can get those glands to function on their own, then we don’t have to worry about using tears as much. Or, if we’re using tears a lot, this can get the relief we need. Hydro Eyes is a great pill to treat dry eyes.
As your Jenks eye doctor, we’re always looking for different ways to help you out. There is a procedure out called LipiFlow that will actually very gently heat the oil glands and put pressure on them. Little numbing drops used. It’s about a 10 minute therapy, in office. It works really, really well and it lasts for about a year or two. For patients who are resistant to taking any type of pill, they just don’t want to, this is a great option.
Let’s switch to the different type of dry eye. We mentioned a little bit about inflammatory dry eye with some of the different steps and common conditions but on an inflammatory type dry eye, Restasis is usually the first place I go. It’s tried and true. It’s been out a long time. We have true studies that have shown, it makes the eyes produce more natural tears. That’s what we want. Natural tears on the eyes, not the brand natural tears but what your body’s making. That’s what’s going to be best.
If we see a patient come in with inflammatory dry eye and their symptoms are so bad and their signs are worse than Restasis will take care of, we will commonly also put them on a steroid dose. This may be for two weeks, it may be for four weeks. We try not to keep them on them year round unless we have to. It may be that a few months a year we use it but steroids are really our friend. Yes, they have side effects but they can be managed and watched closely. The benefit of a steroid is far exceeding the risks.
The exciting thing in the world of dry eyes is there’s a new player in the game, which does not happen very often. A drop has come out called Xibrom. They haven’t fully figured out how it works. They do know the safety profile and it’s a safe drop. It’s not going to hurt the eyes. It may have some stinging. It may have some bad taste when you’re getting used to it that first week but those things generally go away. We’ve had this drop out for about two months now and I’ve had some patients that have been on Restasis, have been on steroids, have been on Hydro Eyes and we just couldn’t get them the relief they needed and they felt like this was a miracle drop. It’s very
Once again, if you’re having any of these signs and symptoms, if you’ve been through some of this stuff and you want to know more, please reach out to us. As your Jenks eye doctor, we’re here to take care of you. Many of these things can improve your quality of life.
Now, another area of treatment we need to talk about a little bit is for exposure types. When an eye can’t close all the way, it can’t spread the tears over and that becomes really dangerous. Using a lubricating tear will almost always have to go to the preservative free, which we learned last time is needed to keep that preservative from irritating the eyes. Commonly, we’ll move into a preservative free gel because gels are thicker and they hold on the eyes. When the eyes can’t blink, we’re having to use medications to supplement that.
We’ll also use an ointment at night. Ointments at night are a good thing. Ointments, the difference they are from gels, ointments are like a neosporin type, just with no antibiotic in there. It’s thick and when it’s put in the eye and it’s made for the eye, it will actually blur vision really bad but it’ll last a long time. That’s a why we will use those at bedtime on our patients that are having trouble.
If you’ve experienced any of these symptoms, please reach out to us at Insight Eyecare. Our mission is to improve every life at every encounter. This means that we want all of our patients to have healthy and comfortable eyes with the clearest vision possible to view and enjoy your life. When you think you need a Jenks eye doctor, come see us at Insight Eyecare. Our welcoming staff, the state-of-the-art facility, our advanced diagnostic equipment, the eye glasses boutique and the thousands of contacts that we stock will meet the needs of any patient. As your Jenks eye doctor, we treat all different types of disease. Near-sightedness, far-sightedness, astigmatism, cataracts, glaucoma, dry eyes, allergies, getting foreign metal in the eyes, macular degeneration and many, many others. Bring us your red, gritty, sandy, scratched and watery eyes. We want to help. We are your Jenks eye doctor. We are here for you. God bless, have a good night.
