Feeling hopeless about dry eye

[amir akhtar]

Yeah mine said it was from studying so much in grad school.

Hey Guys!! once I was suffered with dryeyes , and I have posted the solution here:https://malangisdiary.blogspot.com/2019/03/how-to-cure-chronic-dry-eyes.html (How to cure chronic dry eyes - Malangi's Diary)

 

[anteloper]

ONLY if you can't produce tears at all when crying, is there something wrong with your eyes.

This is not true.

"dry eye" is not a diagnosis, and there are many types of dry eye. But the most common type of dry eye (MGD) is a problem with the oil glands in our eyelids, and not with the tears themselves. There are many people with dry eye who produce plenty of tears and have no trouble crying, but still have lots of eye pain, because their tears evaporate quickly, because there is no oil layer on the surface to protect those tears from the air. Sources: (1), (2) below.

I was told by an eye doctor friend that the "dry eye" thing is being promoted to sell prescriptions.

This is true. But that doesn't mean that "dry eye" isn't a real condition. Many people suffer from severe dry eye, and there is evidence that some are affected by "corneal neuropathy" where there is a problem with the extremely-sensitive nerves in the cornea. Source: (3). The pharmaceutical industry promotes many medical problems but that doesn't mean that all of those problems are fictional or ultimately just TMS. There are some people with "dry eye" that shouldn't be taking these prescriptions but that doesn't mean that "dry eye" is just made up.

He said, if you can cry real tears then you don't have a physical problem based in your eyes or ducts or tear production. So, any treatment is topical and not handling the problem.

If you have MGD ("evaporative dry eye") then yes, you don't have a problem in your eyes or ducts because the problem is in the oil glands in your eyelids. It's true that the artificial tears often prescribed for "dry eye" are topical and don't address the underlying problem, which is often an unstable tear film. Sometimes the problem is more complex.

You might not drink enough water, or take decongestions, or be eating or drinking things that dehydrate your system: alcohol, coffee, tea, etc. But, it's not a disease. It's a result of an imbalance.

If you have dry eye symptoms it's true that you should drink more water and consume as little alcohol and caffeine as possible. But "dry eye" is a real disease, and in the case of MGD it's definitely not just an imbalance. As Tunza already said, some people have dry eye caused by the autoimmune disease Sjogren's syndrome which is also not just an imbalance. But diet and exercise do help with all of the above, and if you have dry eye, I highly recommend eating a plant-based diet high in omega-3s and vitamins A, C, and E. So what is the role of TMS in dry eye? I'll write a second post talking about that.

Sources:
1. http://www.tfosdewsreport.org/report-epidemiology_report/71_36/en/ (TFOS DEWS II REPORT - Epidemiology Report - TFOS - Tear Film & Ocular Surface Society)
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26781133 (Revisiting the vicious circle of dry eye disease: a focus on the pathophysiology of meibomian gland dysfunction. - PubMed - NCBI)
3. http://digg.com/2015/chronic-eye-pain ('Dry Eye' Has Ruined People's Lives — And Stumped The Medical Community)

 

[anteloper]

I don't know exactly, but probably not enough. I guess I'll try to eat more fruits and veggies. Everyone seems to say it's tms. Thanks for your input.

Keep in mind that this is a TMS forum so of course most people are going to say it's TMS. I'm not saying that everyone here is biased, but simply because we're here, that means we're more likely to have had or think about TMS, and see it as an explanation for most things. Same underlying reason why doctors are quick to prescribe medication for so many different issues.

That said, I do think TMS can play a role in dry eye. Sarno's theory of TMS says that unconscious rage gets expressed (or repressed) through the nervous system as decreased blood flow to muscles and nerves, which causes pain symptoms. There are no blood vessels in the cornea so I'm not sure if TMS can explain dry eye symptoms directly. But for people with evaporative dry eye (commonly MGD, meibomian gland dysfunction) I think TMS helps explain in some cases why the meibomian glands in our eyelids can become clogged.

Normally, the meibum (oil) in the glands gets secreted onto our eyes when we blink, through pressure from the blinking muscles in our eyelids. I think TMS can affect these muscles and thus contribute to developing MGD. If, because of TMS, we keep these muscles tense, or we are unable to relax them properly, the pressure in our glands will stay high and they won't be as good at secreting meibum, and will tend to become clogged over time.

Treatment in this case is similar to other kinds of TMS, but in particular it's important to identify and "feel" the muscles in our eyelids and learn to relax them properly when we're not blinking.

 

[Duende]

In my humble opinion, the point is not whether X is TMS, and Y is a real disease. Everything is real in some way. The point is that the mind heals (or the opposite) real diseases and structural problems. And there are thousands of examples and testimonies of this fact. TMS speech is weak when someone asks "is cancer TMS?", because the question is wrong. The question is "Can the mind cure cancer?" and the answer is yes, of course, although this does not mean that it is easy.

I believe that the Sarno's vision is absolutely important because it opens the possibilities of healing beyond conventional medicine, so limited and wrong. But I do not think that the patients cured by Sarno did not have any structural problem. Surely some had, but they were cured by belief and mental and emotional change.

 

[fullclout]

Before I found out about tms, (I'd had sciatica about a year at this point) I hit my eye with my purse strap buckle. It kinda hurt but wasn't worried. I work for an eye doctor so I had her look at it the next day and it was fine. But shortly after that, it got red, mostly the bottom half. Didn't hurt. Stayed that way for about a year. Eventually it did feel dry, and when they tested it, it was actually dry. I even had a slight vision decrease. So, warm compresses, fish and flax oil, systane. Nothing worked. At some point during that year, I found out about tms and was doing tms work for my leg. Then a lightbulb went off. "Pfft it's tms!!" Guess what. The red went away. It was less than a month before it was gone.

 

[NameK]

Dry eyes was my first tms symptoms to emerge along with light sensitivity and other dry eye symptoms.

I've had dry eyes now for just over two years. My eye doctor didnt know what it could be from but I honestly think it could be from an adverse reaction I had to an antibiotic as I developed dry eyes, floaters, light sensitivity not long after I had it and my vision got alittle worse after as well.

Is that tms ? Could be ? But the weird thing is my eyes are on my really dry in the morning (I get alot of eye debris that I have to clean out) and after that even though my eyes appear dry they feel fine.