Dry Eyes symptoms may include feelings of dryness, scratchiness, grittiness, sandiness, watering, blurriness, or fluctuating vision.

Surprisingly, the most common cause of dry eye syndrome is not insufficient production of tears, but insufficient production of oils from your meibomian glands, due to them being “clogged up” and inflamed.

You don’t necessarily need to feel like your eyes are “dry” to have Dry Eyes Syndrome (DES), or MGD. Other symptoms include feeling scratchiness, grittiness, sandiness, watering, blurriness, etc.

Some of the risk factors to having Dry Eye are: high usage of digital screens, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, dehydration, and heavy AC use.

Visine, and other OTC eye drops like them, are not a good option to treat dry eyes. These types of eye drops are a tool used to MASK dry eye symptoms, but not to treat. In fact, Visine products contain a vasoconstrictor that temporarily constricts inflamed conjunctival blood vessels, to help the appearance. But with chronic use, Visine will eventually cause a “rebound effect” causing worse redness and dryness. You should never use Visine to treat dry eyes, because it will make it worse!

Dry eye is a chronic, progressive disease that affects the surface of the eye. Without treatments, the symptoms may ebb and flow, but there is likely progressive damage occurring to the front surface of your eye. If left untreated, dry eyes can become dangerous. Excessive dryness can scar the cornea, impairing vision and damaging the tissues. Significant dryness can lead to greater chance of infection, breakdown of the corneal barriers and perforation of the cornea. It also makes wearing contact lenses uncomfortable, and in the long run, impossible.

The cost for a single session of Thermal 1-Touch treatment is $300. Relief usually lasts months–not the hours or even minutes that you get with artificial tears. Individual results vary, but most patients want re-treatment every 3-6 months. Fully 100% of our patients reported “enormous satisfaction and relief” from their treatment, and 100% elected for eventual retreatment (but we only recommend treatment if you have moderate to severe MGD–not mild)

If you feel like you have exhausted all options when it comes to treating your Dry Eyes or MGD, contact us to schedule a Dry Eye Evaluation (which will be covered by your medical not vision insurance if you have a low deductible), to see if our newest and most advanced Dry Eye treatment–the Thermal 1-touch–is right for you!