Optometrist, Dr Pricilla Ho, discusses how some of the most well-known ‘red eye’ treatment eye drops like Visine, Cleareyes and Naphon A can actually make your red eyes worse in the long term.
Have you ever woken up with bad red eyes maybe due to a late night out or maybe too many cups of coffee the previous day or even maybe your allergies have decided to flare up overnight but it’s morning now and you need to go to work or you have an important meeting so you don’t want to look tired or get questioned about your red eyes so you look for things that
Will get rid of the redness so on your journey for redness relief you go to the pharmacy and find the eye with the eye drops to see what can help and there’s a large selection of eye drops which makes it very confusing and you don’t know which one is going to work for you you might see words on the packaging such as redness relief irritation relief allergy relief or
Clinically proven and you go to yourself hey that’s what i need so you buy some eye drops put in your eyes and pretty quickly the redness in your eyes are gone the next day you’re working up with red eyes again so you put some more drops in and with the moments your red eyes clear up again you go wow this is great so keep continuing to use the eye drops daily until
You seem to be relying on them more over time and you start to find that your eyes get extremely red if you don’t put a drop or maybe even a few drops in on a single given day eventually you feel that you have become addicted to the jobs and can’t seem to live without them so at this point you’re probably wondering which drops i’m talking about well i’m actually
Talking about a class of drugs called decongestants and the most common brands of the congestions on the market are biasing clear eyes and of course a and decongestants constrict the blood vessels in your eyes making them smaller giving the appearance of clearer and wider eyes while clear eyes visine enough con a are all decongestants they contain different
Active ingredients the main active ingredient in visine is tetrahydrozoline hydrochloride while in clear eyes enough cognae it is naphthazoline hydrochloride what’s problematic with these ingredients is that with continued use those constricted blood vessels re-dilate or expand to a bigger size than what it was initially making your eyes appear more red this
Is why these decongestants can be problematic where overuse can eventually lead you to be over reliant on it to maintain white eyes if you stop using it then that redness becomes your normal state this is what we call rebound redness and it’s a process that occurs due to tachyphylaxis and tachyphylaxis means a decreased response to a drug following its initial
Administration and is known issue with this class of decongestant eye drops the packaging on visine clear eyes and napkin a bottles even advises its patients to be careful with overuse as it may cause more redness but it’s in the fine print so why do you use it if you shouldn’t use these decongestants the more important question is what is causing your red eyes
And there are a lot of reasons for red eyes so we need to figure out what the cause is first before we can decide on the best treatment and most causes of redness can be grouped to being either due to an infection or due to inflammation by using these can decongestant eye drops it can actually mask the true cause of redness and make it more difficult for your eye
Doctor to diagnose one of the most common inflammatory causes of red eyes is dry eyes especially nowadays where most people spend a lot of time on screens and devices you don’t tend to blink as often causing your eyes to dry out faster with dry eyes using a lubricating eye drop can help such as sustain or my favorite hilo fort lubricating drops re-moisturizes the
Surface and will relieve the redness due to irritated dry eyes without causing any rebound redness you can even use it a couple of times a day if required and it won’t harm your eyes if redness is due to allergies there are better drops that target the allergy symptoms such as antihistamine drops with the active ingredients olipatidine or ketotifen in australia
We have patentl or zatadin redness due to more serious issues such as infections or inflammatory conditions won’t get better with fizzy napkin a or clear eyes it is not made for this purpose and definitely requires further evaluation and treatment by your eye doctor so using these decongestant drops may actually make matters worse by masking the true cause of the
Problem and delay your treatment so if the redness persists even after trialing the lubricating eye drops or if you have other symptoms with the red eyes such as like discharge pain light sensitivity or vision changes then definitely see your eye doctor to get that checked out i mean there is still a place for visiting or clear eyes and napkin like if you need to
Have that quick red-eye fix for special occasions such as weddings or for a photo shoot or if you had a really big night out and you need to go to the work the next day but an even better alternative to visiting clear eyes or nikon a is lumify so lumify also works by constricting the blood vessels to relieve redness but it acts on a slightly different receptor
On the eye which doesn’t cause the rebound redness after you stop using it now you all know what happens if you overuse visine clear eyes or napkin a so use sparingly or use the alternative drops i mentioned of course if you don’t notice any improvements your eye doctor to get it checked out if you enjoyed this video and found it helpful hit the like button down
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Transcribed from video
Don't overuse these eye drops | Optometrist Explains By Eyes Explained