How I Improved My Vision and Eye-Dryness Naturally.

brown eyes I have always struggled with dryness in my eyes. I remember in high school, struggling to pull my purple contact lenses off my brown, spider-veined eyeballs at the end of the day, hoping I wouldn’t pull a layer of skin off my iris along with the lens itself.

Eventually I gave up on contact lenses as they hurt more than they were worth and I wasn’t about to be that person putting drops in her eyes multiple times a day. I don’t even bother or remember to reapply my lip-gloss, let alone my eye drops. Glasses became something I used only when I drove or wanted to read the board in my college classes. But the dryness continued, despite my iris skin still in tact.

So at the at the age of 26, when my optometrist found multiple dry patches on my eye along with calluses forming, I decided to try her suggestion of getting punctal plugs. My vision had also diminished to 20/40 in my good eye and 20/80 in my bad eye, so I had to do something if I wanted to wear contacts again. I was ecstatic to discover there was something that could help. So I let her get super close with this huge magnifying glass and some special tweezer-looking instruments while she stuck these tiny, pinpoint sized “punctal” plugs into my lower tear ducts. It was supposed to prevent them from sucking up the tears in my eyes and allow more to stay on my eyeball. That worked….for like 2 months. Until the plugs fell out.

So I went back and had them replugged. And then they fell out again.

After the second time, she refused to put in more plugs and said that I just was not a candidate. Instead, she would prescribe me prescription eye drops called Restasis. She said I had too many dry patches to just go with regular drops. So I tried them. Supposedly it takes a few months before they start working because they are essentially an antihistamine that works at calming the swelling in your inner eye that could be preventing it from making tears. Well I didn’t make it long enough to discover if it would work because I got pregnant with my daughter Scotland. And so off I went.

My eyes like being pregnant, so I didn’t need anything during that time. But as soon as Scotland was born, my tears dried up like an Arizona desert. It hurt to blink, to see, its awful. And I didn’t want to wait another 6 months for the Restasis to possibly kick in.

cod liver oil So I called my optometrist. She recommended I try fish oils, 2-3000 mg a day minimum. She said this would work if my tears were low because they were evaporating more easily due to less oil/water ratio in the tear consistency. Somehow, fish oils would help in that area.

So I tried them. Within 2 days I noticed a huge difference. Redness gone. Less pain. I was ecstatic! And I’ve been taking them for two years since. When I forget, I can tell I forgot. Within 2 days of forgetting, my eyes begin to feel dry again. So it certainly isn’t a cure but it definitely is my daily remedy.

And now the bonus– I went in to the optometrist last brown eyes week to get an updated prescription for my eye glasses and just do the usual check up we are supposed to get every couple of years. And they found no more dry patches! And my vision even improved. I’m 20/20 in my good eye and 20/30 in my bad eye. When I asked the optometrist how that could happen, she said that part of our vision depends on the amount of tears in our eyes. Improving tear consistency heals the eye of the callouses and damaging effects on vision.

If you struggle with eye dryness I highly recommend fish oils. They not only should help, but they also help with general inflammation and depression. I alternate between regular fish oil and cod liver oil. When I do take cod liver oil, I get the fermented kind so that the vitamin A and D are naturally occurring and not synthetically added back in after being cooked out of the oil. I also find that with cod liver oil, I don’t need to take as much fish oil as I do with regular fish oil in order to receive the same benefits to my dry eyes.

These are the fish oils I love and use depending which one is the better deal at the time.
AMRAP Nutrition Fermented Norwegian Cod Liver Oil