When going outside one day, before I opened the door I realized that I didn’t have my contacts in, but thought, “Why not this once.” When I came back in, my eye kept feeling as if it had something in it, causing me to wonder if the wind or sun had somehow scratched it. In wondering this, I realized that perhaps it was my contact that caused it- maybe after having them on daily for 6ish years that my eye stopped forming a barrier.
Ever since then, I’ve stopped wearing my contacts for the first 4 hours in the morning and last 2 hours at night. Even though I’ve noticed my far-distance vision getting better, once in a while I feel that same scritch scratch in my eye, so I researched something that aligned with my knowledge about skincare, “How does the eye form a barrier in the first place?”
Turns out, there’s 3 layers: Outer - Oil 2nd - Water Inner - Mucus
I figured, “Since I don’t know what to do about the mucus layer, why not focus on the oil?” As someone who has rosacea with drier skin, I’ve seen how well applying the right kinds of oil to my face does. So why not the eyes? Turns out that among the many oils out there, WebMD says that Jojoba “is a lot like human skin sebum, the oil your skin makes to stay moisturized and supple,” as well as for eyes!
Once I applied it at night, in the morning the scratchy feel went away. My eyes were crusty too lol (so it was doing something). I’ve continued not wearing contacts for longer stretches, until the day I had to go to the optometrist.
The day before, I made sure that my dry eye was about gone, since I didn’t want them prescribing something if I could fix it myself. When going in, they did the usual gizmos, though for the one with a balloon in the center I was scared to ask if it was going to blow air into my eyes… sure enough, it did. The dreaded air puff I was terrified of as a kid (I even called ahead of time to ask if they did it, and she said no!). Oh well, the doctor said I had good eye reflexes.
When it came time to examining my eyes, she took a moment, then said with a thick, perhaps slavic, accent, “You have the cleanest eyes I’ve ever seen, I usually tell my patients what they do for better eyes, but I’m wondering what you do.” I was a bit taken aback, considering I didn’t even know that people came in with dirty eyes. Isn’t that what your eye’s job is? To clean itself? I let her know it was jojoba, and after she wondered how to spell it, I went out pretty satisfied that my research and intuition led to better eye health. Not only that, but my left eye’s vision got better, going from -4.25 to -4.00 whereas my right eye stayed around -3.50.