Podcast 233: Lecture

Today we are talking all about dry eyes. What causes dry eyes, what can you do to alleviate the symptoms, and how can you work toward getting rid of dry eyes. Enjoy the show. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter at: www.drsamberne.com. SUMMARY KEYWORDS cornea, eyes, eyedrops, epithelium, eyelids, vitamin, symptoms, question, corneal, dry, msm, topically, hydration, dry eye syndrome, pain, lubrication, castro, inflammation, collagen, blink Hello, everyone, it’s Dr. Sam, I’d like to welcome you to my EyeClarity podcast. This is a show that offers cutting-edge information on how to improve your vision and overall wellness through holistic methods. I so appreciate you spending part of your day with me. If you have questions, you can send them to [email protected]. Now to the latest EyeClarity episode. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Sam and I want to welcome you to another EyeClarity podcast. So today I'm going to take one question. This is a very interesting condition. And even though it's a bit unusual, it affects a lot of people in terms of symptoms. And it has to do with dry eyes. You know how we get dry eyes sitting in front of our screen all day, and more and more people are suffering dry eye syndrome, and what do you do for it? Well, in this particular question, this is actually from a doctor, she's asking a question about her mom who was diagnosed with a disease called limbal stem cell deficiency, or better known as LS CD. This affects the corneal epithelium, which is the front surface of the cornea. And the cornea is the clear window of the eye, we know that it's made up of mostly collagen, it requires a lot of hydration to stay healthy. When we start getting dry, there can be an inflammatory situation going on in the eyelids are either not producing enough tears or there's tear evaporation which happens too quickly. But in this particular LS CD, basically what's happening is the cornea epithelium is not able to replenish itself. And so what happens is that we start getting the symptoms as follows unstable visual acuity, Corneal erosions, ocular pain, decreased vision, scarring, and it really sets up a situation where a person has a really difficult time. Using their eyes and vision, they end up getting blurred vision, every time they blink, they feel like they have something in their eye. We call this a foreign body sensation. Part of the reason why you feel it every time you blink is that the cornea at the end of the cornea, there are a lot of tiny nerve endings. And so if there isn't lubrication or hydration to cover those nerves, then the cornea dries out and every time you blink, you're going to feel your lid rubbing up against the nerve endings of the cornea. And this is what creates like something in my eyes, something feels like it's in my eye, but it's really just the lid creating this irritation. Some other symptoms can be sensitivity to light tearing, and I already talked about this just overall dull pain. So the regular or the conservative or the conventional ways of treating LSC D are as follows using corticosteroids topically. Also there is a surgical procedure that you can use that can scrape the corneal epithelium. There's even a kind of another process that's now being researched called amniotic membrane transplantation. And this is done with I sutures, fibrin glue, and there's a surgery that's done to try to repair the cornea. So in my, my response to this doctor because she's looking more for complementary methods, I think number one is very important to get good tear coverage by using natural eyedrops and the ones that I would recommend would be homeopathic eyedrops, either the Optique or the sim Eliassen and the 5% MSM, we know MSM is a great it's a sulfur molecule.