Your eyes become dry when your tears either can’t properly reach them or evaporate too quickly. This can happen for any number of reasons, from taking certain medications to simply staying in a warm, dry climate.
• A hot or particularly windy environment
• Concentrating for too long on one thing
• Hormone levels during pregnancy
The world around you often has the biggest effect on your eyes. Particularly windy or hot days can cause your eyes to quickly become drier.
Any activity that requires constant visual concentration can have an effect on your eyes. Whether you are reading a book, working on the computer or driving a car, you tend to blink a lot less than you usually would. This leads to the thin layer of tears over your eyes evaporating quicker than it can be replaced, resulting in drier eyes.
After a particularly long day of wearing contact lenses, they can start to become less moist and your eyes can begin to dry out. This can be remedied with some eye drops, or simply by giving your eyes a rest and switching to glasses for the rest of the night.
The wrong contact lens can sometimes irritate the eye and quickly cause dry eyes. If you find this happens often you should talk to your optician immediately about switching to a different brand or type of lens all together.
Dry eye syndrome starts to become more and more common as we grow older. This can either be because your eyes are producing fewer tears, or that your eyelids become less effective at spreading the tears across your eyelids.
Hormones play a very important role in stimulating the production of tears. So when pregnancy causes your hormone levels to change it can increase the risk of dry eye syndrome. A similar effect can happen on certain contraceptive pills and during the menopause.
• A dry, gritty sensation in your eyes that makes you want constantly rub them
• A burning sensation and red, bloodshot eyes.
• Blurry vision that seems to get a little better when you blink.
• How to treat dry eyes
• Dry eye treatments
• How to use eye drops
