Having dry, itchy eyes may not seem like a big deal, but it can quickly become an annoyance and even detrimental to your overall health. It's important to recognize if you have chronic dry eye syndrome and treat it correctly. Dr. Bruce Dornn (Optometrist) discusses what Dry Eye is and what the common causes of chronic dry eye conditions are.
"Hi, I'm Dr. Bruce Dorn from Eye-Revive.ca. An extremely common question in my office is what is dry eye?
Dry eye, simply put, is lack of production of a normal tear film on the surface of your eye. The normal tear film is incredibly important for two reasons... One, having a normal smooth tear layer allows proper refraction or light to travel through the eye properly so you can have clear vision. Secondly, the cornea is very unique in that it's one of the only tissues in your body with no blood supply. So, you need that oil layer to literally feed oxygen to the cornea.
The tear layer is a lot more complicated than we might imagine. There are three distinct layers. The outer layer is an oily layer, the central layer is an aqueous layer, and the very bottom layer or the layer adjacent to your eye or your cornea is called the mucan layer. Any dysfunction or any one of those three layers can cause a chronic dry eye condition, and by its very nature because it occurs every day, day in and day out, becomes very, very problematic for any patient who experiences this."