Eye soreness and redness. What is it?

February 14, 2008 12:50 PM

My right eye feels tired all the time. Why?

At 9.30am this morning, my right eye felt tired. Imagine being awake for 20 hours, reading. That's what it felt like. Except I'd got out of bed two hours earlier and was perfectly refreshed. This is the best way I can describe how it feels.

I really don't think this is eye strain, because I'm not straining my eyes for it to happen (I posted about this previously but I think I asked the wrong question). I can best describe it as tiredness -- sometimes I get the involuntary urge to scrunch my eyes up and rub my eyes. The outer whites of my eyes tend to go red, although I wouldn't describe it as bloodshot. More like I've caught my eyeball with my finger by accident or something similar.

I found it occurs less if I lower the brightness of my computer screen almost down to 10/20% of total. I had thought it was related to my glasses (astigmatism) but, actually, wearing glasses makes no difference. In some ways not wearing glasses feels more comfortable, even if everything is a little blurry.

I've mentioned it to the optician, who says it's eye strain. I mentioned it to my doctor, who looked into my eye and said everything was OK and I should live with it.

It comes and goes and I haven't really spotted a pattern. Some days good, some days bad.

posted by deeper red to health & fitness (2 comments total)

Did you get a full eye exam to check your current vision against your lens prescription, or did the docs just give their expert opinions? Your symptoms sound consistent with needing new glasses (or at least lenses), even though it's bad whether or not you wear them -- if your eye is struggling to focus in both cases, that would do it. When I first needed separate reading glasses, this happened to me, because neither bare vision nor distance lenses gave me the correction I needed to focus at computer-monitor-distance.

(Disclaimers: I am completely unqualified to offer any sort of medical diagnosis, and I tend to err on the side of buying new glasses because I like having a variety of pretentious frames.)
posted by nicepersonality at 1:45 PM on February 14, 2008

I had the same problem. I actually had to visit several eye doctors before they correctly diagnosed the problem: my left eye wasn't producing enough tears/moisture.

This problem is apparently common but my first two doctors didn't even think to check it out. My third doctor measured the amount of tears produced in my eyes using two special pieces of paper, and they found my left eye was too dry. They prescribed over-the-counter artificial tears (NOT visine for redness) and that helped.

Your description sounds like you may have the same problem. The reason your eye may be so red is that you are rubbing it and there isn't enough moisture in your eye to protect it. You need to stop rubbing your eyes -- I got an infection doing that.

Go to the eye doctor and ask them to measure your tear production to see if it is leaving your right eye too dry and unprotected. Do not start using artificial tears or eye drops without them checking this out first.
posted by jca at 3:37 PM on February 14, 2008