Winter is coming! How this can require extra “adjustments” when you have dry eye disease.

Apart from the Internet streaming services we default to and may binge on (like the HBO GOT series this title riffs on), many of us (at least in the Northern Latitudes) will spend even more time inside, staring at screens and/or books to pass the winter months - and dry eye patients often ask what they can do to mitigate their misery during this season.

A close colleague of mine (who I just met in person after collaborating for years) Dr. Laura Periman recently posted to a FB group of dry eye sufferers, this golden nugget: “Cold air doesn’t hold as much water as warm air.  Radiant heat instead of forced air heat may help. Also, Ziena (moisture chamber) glasses or onion goggles.” To further riff off this information, an obvious but often overlooked addition, is to add a humidifier to moisten the air and avoid sitting near sources of moving air (like fans).

• I also posted to the same question, “in my experience, the amount of attention and reflected light from the average digital screen can be more detrimental to blinking and evaporation than a printed book with "adequate" lighting (super bright lighting can also reflect strongly off a printed page and will depend on the quality of the paper as to how "reflective' it is). There are screen lighting options that can reduce the digital glare, as well as some glass coatings for your glasses.”

Such eyeglass coatings can include:

• Anti-reflective coating – this is particularly helpful as this can reduce glare (so sometimes referred to as “anti-glare”) by reflecting unnecessary light rays that would otherwise be further scattered by a dry eye’s surface, making it harder to see clearly. Since light accelerates evaporation (I use the analogy of rain clouds dropping their water on the ground. If the clouds shield that ground moisture from the sun, the ground stays wet – but part the clouds and shine the sun and the water rapidly disappears (evaporates).

• Anti-fog coating – when coming in from the cold, dry air, glasses will tend to fog up inside a warmer, moister area like your well-humidified home, store or office. Anti-fog coatings can come in many forms including those you can apply from towelettes or via sprays.

• Blue light filtering coating – I covered this in some depth in an earlier blog post, here: https://www.eyethera.com/blog/do-blue-blocking-glasses-help-with-dry-eyes?rq=blue%20light

• UV protective coating – UV comes in 3 forms, UVA, UVB and UVC. Unless you are a welder, you probably don’t need to worry about UVC (the most damaging of UV light) as it is fully absorbed by the Ozone layer in our atmosphere. But UVA and UVB are not sufficiently impeded by the Ozone layer and can be detrimental to our eyes (and skin). Wearing UV coating protection can be helpful to our eyes (and wearing sun blocking agents helpful to our skin).

• Scratch-resistant coating – If, like me, you can be “hard on glasses” then such coatings over plastic lenses can save the cost of more frequent replacement (or wearing scratched up glasses that can blur our vision and add to unnecessary eye strain).

Use of contact lenses can also be more challenging since a decent tear layer is most often needed for a proper fit and good tolerance of wearing them. I covered more about contact lenses – and their care, here: https://www.eyethera.com/blog/z9r2sgjxe1iyza1k6535laildtqilm?rq=contact%20lens and here: https://www.eyethera.com/blog/6g9blza7q7q9zmhychmq509nsad9a4 - so if you are nearsighted enough to read comfortably without your glasses or contacts – or can wear reading glasses instead of contact lenses, then that may be a better option (at least in dry, winter weather).

As always, I recommend consulting a good dry eye expert/specialist to help determine what is best for you and your eyes.

To schedule an appointment with Dr. Jaccoma, call Excellent Vision at either of these two dry eye offices:

(1) 155 Griffin Rd, Portsmouth, NH 03801 (603) 574-2020

(2) 3 Woodland Rd, STE 112 Stoneham, MA 02180 (near Boston) (781) 321-6463

Also note that past topics I’ve posted on can be easily found by using the “Search Bar” in the blue gauze “mask” on the woman at the top of the Blog Page.