Overly Salty Tears
Segment 3
Too much salt in the salad dressing.
While the recipe of the salad dressing is critically important - just like the recipe of our blood is to our body - the more common problems relating to dry eye come from
#1: too little oil - or to less healthy oil - also called Meibomian Gland Dysfunction or MGD and
#2: too little water, also known as Aqueous Tear Deficiency or ATD.
Less common is a lack of protein but very common is the excess of salt which is rarely related to your dietary salt intake - but most commonly affected by too little water to dilute it. The lack of water can occur for many reasons, not the least of which may come from not drinking or retaining enough water in your diet. However most happens from evaporation - when the warm water of our tears evaporates into the dry air around us because of insufficient oil floating on top. This leads to what is called evaporative dry eye due to MGD - the leading cause of all dry eye.
As the water leaves, the salts and proteins remain, gradually concentrating the dry spots left when the water evaporates. These dry patches are like little open sores on the surface of the eye - and the concentrated salts get rubbed into the sores with blinking. This leads to the burning, scratching and then reflex tearing - as the fire hose turns on - to wash the excess salts away.
This is also why many people with Dry Eye will complain of the opposite symptom - as in tearing, but remember that saltwater is not a great substitute for salad dressing and this tearing tends to create more burning and stinging, which leads to more irritation and more tearing.
This cycle of recurring open sores on the surface of the eye and the concentrated salts getting rubbed into the sores - with further evaporation and blinking - leading to yet more burning, scratching and then reflex tearing - results in increasing inflammation (your body’s response to irritation) and the vicious cycle of evaporative dry eye disease. When the salts and proteins concentrate and combine, we can get stringy strands or white mattering on the lids and lashes (from excess proteins and salts left when the water leaves from evaporation). And all because you need an oil change!