If you’ve ever suffered from times when your eyes feel unusually dry, you may feel it gets worse throughout the day and even peaks at night. However, it doesn’t end there. Our eyes endure a fair amount of strain on any given day, thanks to long hours of exposure to screens. This, in turn, leads to fatigue that can easily trigger symptoms. It makes you wonder sometimes, what is the best eye mask for dry eyes?
Everything from not blinking enough to wearing contacts can make you more likely to have dry eyes, and while drops are a must-have, they can only help you go so far before you need to start using other methods.
Why Do Eyes Dry Out?
Dry eye is a condition where your eyes feel dry, irritated, and uncomfortable. This is often due to not having enough quality tears to lubricate the front surface of the eyes. Typical symptoms include excess watering, gritty texture, or burning sensations in the eye.
However, dry eyes also come with other symptoms, such as the following:
- Redness
- Light sensitivity
- Stringy mucus accumulating near the eye
- Blurry vision
How Do You Relieve Dry Eyes?
Finding relief for dry eyes isn’t all that difficult. While it’s a chronic problem that many patients deal with throughout their lives, maintaining a healthy ocular surface can be quite easy by taking certain steps to care for their eyes.
There are a few types of treatments usually prescribed when dealing with eye care. These include:
- Lubricants – Most mild cases of dry eyes can be managed with over-the-counter solutions. However, store shelves are full of all kinds of ocular lubricants, so it’s important to be careful to choose the right one.
- Lids – The most common form of dry eye is evaporative dry eye, usually treated by massaging the Meibomian glands in the eye with dry heat. Lids can be used to apply this heat and stimulate the production of tears to lubricate the cornea.
- Environmental changes – More often than not, dry eye symptoms can be solved by making small changes to your current environment. For instance, wraparound glasses can be worn to block wind currents from drying out the eyes.
On top of this, you can take a few steps to manage the symptoms of dry eyes before they occur, such as:
- Blink regularly when reading or staring at a computer screen for long periods. Blinking spreads tears across the front surface of your eyes, keeping them hydrated.
- Increase the humidity at work and home. Dry air can cause your eyes to dry out, which in turn triggers symptoms.
- Stay hydrated (drink seven to eight glasses of water a day).
Eye Masks for Dry Eyes
An eye mask is essentially a covering for your eyes, but it can be more than just a piece of fabric.
Eye masks can work wonders when it comes to relieving the symptoms that come with dry eyes. With the right eye mask, you not only get the benefits of heat therapy to massage your eyes, but you also get the most in terms of comfort and functionality.
By using natural moisture, eye masks can even rehydrate the area around your eyes like a more comfortable warm compress, and without the same sopping feeling that comes from any old washcloth.
Ideally, eye masks deal with three things related to uncomfortable eye diseases:
- Chronic dry eye – Most people will experience this at some point as a result of inadequate tear production, especially when sitting at a computer for long periods during the day.
- Meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD) – The blockage of oil-secreting glands in the eyes, which leads to tears evaporating too quickly. This is often cited as the main cause of dry eyes among patients.
- Blepharitis – This generally means “inflammation of the eyelids,” and comes along with burning sensations and overall discomfort. Typically, blepharitis is caused by a buildup of bacteria that finds its way into your eyes.
But with so many different types of eye masks to choose from, it can be tricky to find out what best suits your needs. On top of this, some of them can be quite expensive without necessarily being worth the price.
What Is The Best Eye Mask For Dry Eyes?
When shopping for eye masks to help relieve your dry eyes, make sure to keep the following criteria in mind:
- Fit – You want your mask to cover your eyes comfortably without putting any undue pressure. When you sleep, you not only want it to block out the light, but you also want your mask to stay on your face without slipping.
- Self-heating – Being tired means you don’t have time to microwave your mask before going to bed, so having a self-heating mask is a definite upgrade to a warm cloth on your eyes.
- Fabric – The fabric of your mask can determine how comfortable it will be when you put it on, whether it’s luxurious silk or a more modest, and affordable, cotton.
Eye Masks and Other Issues
Eye masks can also help you with issues aside from dry eyes. Certain types of eye masks, such as those that contain hyaluronic acid and ceramides, can improve the skin under your eyes.
They typically have these three main ingredients to give you a more refreshed, youthful-looking appearance throughout the day:
- Vitamin E – A beneficial antioxidant that protects your eyes against free radicals
- Niacinamide – This ingredient is a safe way to brighten dark circles and is present in many eye creams
- Hyaluronic acid – Overall good for your skin, and is especially effective when paired with the other two ingredients for reducing dark circles and eye bags
Many eye masks meant for helping with eye bags use collagen, which can be applied directly under eyelids for 20 minutes about one to three times per week.
What Is the Best Eye Mask for Dry Eyes?
These days, dry eyes are more common than you might think – and you don’t even know when you have them until it gets bad enough.
When you start experiencing the first symptoms, it’s best not to wait around and start taking steps to take care of your eyes. Repose has the best eye masks in the market. They offer a wide array of products that can also help relieve your eye and sleep problems.
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