The mystery of my scratchy eyes

Introduction

In April and May 2018, I began having problems with my eyes. I felt as though I would often get specks in them, I occasionally got hairs in them, and my eyes felt scratchy at night. This page describes my efforts to figure out what was going on.

I wrote this page mainly as a record for myself, but maybe someone else will also find my story useful.

This story contains a number of speculations I generated as the events were unfolding about what the cause(s) of my eye woes might be. I don't necessarily now agree with all of these speculations in hindsight.

[spoiler] Answer to the mystery: My problem turned out to be dry eye and blepharitis. I was able to reduce the symptoms by taking an omega-3 supplement every day.

Hairs in my eyes

Around 2014 I began using a haircutting razor to cut my own hair, rather than going to a barber or hair salon. I cut my hair very short for several reasons:

• It's easier to cut your own hair if you cut it short, because you don't need to check that different parts have been cut to the same length. The razor itself can let you feel that different parts are cut to the same length. In my case, I often cut my hair as short as is possible with the razor, which ensures that different parts are cut fairly uniformly.
• Short hair is easier to wash.
• Short hair allows your scalp to breathe better.
• Short hair keeps you cooler in the summer. And in the winter, you can just wear a hat.
• With very short hair, you can check your scalp for ticks, which is quite challenging when you have longer hair.

One downside of cutting your hair short is that it increases the risk of getting small hairs in your eyes, because most of the hair pieces that you cut are short rather than long. In addition, you have to cut your hair frequently, so there are more total occasions when you might get hairs in your eyes. Getting these small hairs in eyes has happened to me a few times over the years. I bought safety goggles to wear during activities that have risk of getting stuff in my eyes, but since the goggles wrap around my head, I can't wear them when shaving my head itself (only while shaving other places). Plus, I sometimes get the hairs into my eyes when washing them off in the shower.

I've become more careful to avoid getting hairs in my eyes when shaving my hair. I now wash my hair-covered hands immediately after I finish shaving, before touching other things. And I use a mirror to inspect my head and preemptively remove hairs that look like they might fall into my eyes in the shower.

Dunking eyes in water

One night in spring 2018, a few hairs found their way into my eyes. While I managed to remove two visible hair pieces from my eyes, I continued to feel little invisible specks of something around the edges of my eyes while sleeping for the next two days. After consulting some online advice, I decided to slowly dunk my eyes into a plastic container full of water and then open my eyes as wide as I could. Doing this provided instantaneous relief, and the specks seemed to be gone. The next night I had one or two more remaining specks, but dunking my eyes again seemed to fix the problem.

While I'm not an expert on this topic, I intuitively prefer dunking my eye in water rather than putting my eye under a running faucet because with the dunking method, it seems less likely that a lodged object will be pushed into bad places by the pressure of the water.

Continuing to feel stuff in my eyes

Given that the trick of dunking eyes in water seemed to work, I began using it on further occasions when I felt something or other in my eyes, even if I couldn't see anything stuck in my eyes. However, I also found that I was needing to dunk my eyes a lot, sometimes once every day. Why did it seem like I was getting stuff in my eyes all the time? Was I just more aware of my eyes now, so that minor things bothered me more than they used to?

Most of the time, I couldn't see anything in my eyes, so it was possible that I was just imagining or noticing problems more than before. However, in a few cases, I did indeed find hairs on my lower eyelid, which meant that the situation wasn't entirely in my head.

What could have caused the hairs to get stuck? Was I doing something different now that I didn't used to do? Maybe dunking my eyes itself caused hairs to get stuck? Dunking my eyes in water did sometimes cause my upper eyelashes to point in slightly different directions than they normally would, and maybe they were being stuck in odd directions that bothered my eyes?

At the time, I was using a sleep mask to block light while sleeping. I bought a mask that bent upward in the middle so that it wouldn't touch my eyes. Still, I wondered whether it might be causing problems, perhaps trapping eyelashes that were supposed to fall out in the night? So I tried sleeping without the mask, which I could do if my window was sufficiently well covered to block light.

Still, most of the times when I felt stuff in my eyes, it wasn't accompanied by visible material stuck in the eyes. However, I felt like there really were things (dust particles?) getting into my eyes because

• the sensation of something in my eye was always pretty localized to one side of one eye
• it tended to happen when dust was flying, such as when I moved a blanket or inverted my socks (although it's possible I was just imagining it happening due to expecting it more when dust was flying).

Scratchy eyes at night

In addition to feeling specific specks in my eyes, I noticed that my eyes were often "scratchy" during sleep, feeling kind of like there were miniature pebbles in my eyelids. The problem could be worsened or improve by blinking several times. In general, my eyes have always been different when I wake up from sleep than during the day: they're harder to open and more bloodshot. But the scratchiness seemed different than I was used to.

I also noticed that I was getting a lot of rheum in the corners of my eyes and on my upper eyelashes. It seemed to be considerably more than normal. Alternatively, sometimes I would wake up with wet eyes, which was usually a relief because my eyes were less scratchy in that case.

I looked up a bit about scratchy eyes, and it seemed that one common cause of that sensation was dry eye. That seemed possible, though I was confused by the suddenness of the onset of the symptoms. I planned to find an ophthalmologist whom I could ask about my eye woes.

When my eyes were scratchy, it was often slightly painful to move my eyes back and forth too far. I worried whether eye movements during REM sleep could damage my eyes, though I couldn't easily find information about this concern online. sarahknowseyes (n.d.) does say: "Some Dry Eye sufferers will experience dry, irritated or sore eyes on waking, possibly with some crusty 'sleepy dust'. During rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, our eyes can dry out very quickly and being asleep, it’s difficult to put your drops in."

Bathroom vs. kitchen water?

In my house, the bathroom sink's water seems to have more stuff dissolved in it than the kitchen sink's water. I can taste the difference when drinking it, which is why I always try to fill my water bottle from the kitchen sink. Bathroom City (n.d.) offers one possible explanation for this: "According to Dee Valley Water, the H2O you find in your bathroom taps has usually been stored in a tank in the loft. This means that it isn't fresh from the mains like the water in your kitchen tap and has probably been hanging around there for a while." However, someone familiar with my house thought it was unlikely that there was such a storage tank in the attic. Another possibility could be that the pipes going to the bathroom are longer or more voluminous than the pipes going to the kitchen, so that it takes longer to flush out the old water from the bathroom-sink pipes?

For reasons of convenience, I had always been dunking my eyes in water from the bathroom sink, but one day in late May 2018, I went to the kitchen instead. When I dunked my eyes in that water, it felt more satisfying than the bathroom-sink water, and I felt an almost instantaneous sensation of relief in my eyes. And sure enough, my eye problems basically disappeared for the next two days or so, with no feelings of stuff getting stuck in my eyes, and little rheum produced at night.

About two days later, I dunked my eyes in water (from the kitchen sink this time), in case I had gotten some stuff in them from my fingers. I didn't wait for the water to get super cold, and the water felt less clean than the previous time. Right on schedule, I had a lot of rheum that night.

Even before I had tried the kitchen sink, I knew that warm water from the bathroom sink stung my eyes a lot more than cold water. I was already trying to use water that was as cold as possible from the bathroom sink, since it would presumably have less dissolved stuff. O'Connor (2008): "hot water dissolves contaminants more quickly than cold water". However, I hadn't figured out that even if I let the water get pretty cold from the bathroom sink, it would still be less pure than cold water from the kitchen sink.

(Sadly, running water often kills zooplankton. My water as of 2018 comes from several hundred feet underground, so in my case, I'm less worried about killing extra animals by letting it run longer.)

At this point, I thought that maybe the mystery was solved. Perhaps my eye problems were mainly caused by residual dissolved stuff from the bathroom-sink water staying in my eyes after rinsing them. Perhaps this stuff caused dry eyes, or maybe it was directly causing irritation. Perhaps the dissolved stuff got worse in April and May because the weather got warmer, allowing more stuff to dissolve in the water. (I could already notice this difference as the temperature warmed in terms of how stinging the water felt to my eyes and how long I needed to run it to get it cold.)

Why did I feel like my eye problems were localized? If it was irritation due to dissolved stuff, shouldn't that have been uniform throughout my eyes? Maybe the dissolved stuff made my eyes more dry or sensitive in general, so that I could feel dust in my eyes that I previously wouldn't have noticed?

What caused the more frequent hairs in my eyes? My guess is that those were exacerbated by dunking my eyes in water. There have been a few times when I've dunked my eyes in water to help with one eye irritant, and then a few seconds or a few minutes later, I feel a different eye irritation that turns out to be a stray eyelash. Presumably dunking my eyes in water causes some lashes to fall out and then get stuck.

Was rheum to blame?

Unfortunately, it turned out that dunking my eyes in kitchen water didn't solve my eye woes, although it may have ameliorated the situation. I continued to occasionally feel stuff getting in my eyes and continued to have rheum at night.

I came up with a new hypothesis: maybe most of the specks that I felt in my eyes weren't dust but rheum. This would explain why I tended to feel like they were in corners of my eyes, as well as why they tended not to be visible: maybe they dissolved on their own over time. According to this theory, maybe dunking my eyes in water kicked off my increased rheum, and then the feelings of rheum in my eyes kept me using water, which continued the rheum production?

However, after devising this theory, I noticed at least two instances where the cause of eye irritation was clearly dust, because it happened exactly when I happened to kick up some dust around my face (such as when adjusting the covers on my bed). I didn't used to have such a problem with dust in my eyes, so it seemed unlikely that rheum was the only thing that had changed since before my eye woes began.

Orange balls on lower eyelid

Twice while inspecting my eyes for things that might be in them, I noticed an orange sphere on the lower eyelid that was the size of an extremely tiny raindrop. I couldn't dislodge it with my finger, but it seemed to disappear on its own within a day or two. I didn't know if it was related to my other eye issues or if I just noticed it because I was checking my eyes in mirrors way more than before.

Getting an eye exam

I finally scheduled a visit with an ophthalmology office. I was seen by an optometrist for a general eye exam and to discuss my scratchy-eyes problem.

The eye exam included the following parts.

• I read a chart of letters on the wall with one eye covered, and then again with the other eye covered. I could make out most of the letters except those in the bottom row. (Since my college years I've known that I'm a bit nearsighted and would probably have to wear glasses if I drove a car, but since I don't drive, I don't ever wear my glasses.)
• I sat my chin on a platform while instruments shined light across my eyes. If I recall correctly, this was done both before and after dilating my pupils with eyedrops. In addition to looking straight ahead, I was sometimes asked to look left, right, up, and down.
• The optometrist used a Q-tip to pull down my lower eyelids a bit to look there. This didn't hurt at all.
• The optometrist measured my eye pressure with a small cylindrical instrument held in front of my eyes.
• The optometrist grabbed a tiny sample of tears from the corners of my eyes. I wasn't sure if this would feel like a poke, but the tip of the instrument was very small and the optometrist was gentle, so I didn't feel anything.

Following is a stylized re-imagination of what I discussed with the optometrist after the exam. It's likely that none of these are exact quotes, and I'm just using a dialogue format to make exposition easier. There's a chance that I misremember some of the information, so obviously don't take this dialogue as professional medical advice for yourself.

The optometrist prescribed the following:

• oil-based artificial tears, taking one drop several times per day
• at least one of
  • warm compress: daily for 10 minutes
  • omega-3 supplement: 1000 to 2000 mg/day

I had further questions:

Further information on dry eye

During further reading following the optometrist visit, I discovered the phrase "foreign body sensation", which seems to perfectly describe my main symptom. Hylo© Eye Care (n.d.) explains:

Sometimes your eye is itchy or feels scratchy – you have the sensation that a foreign body, such as a grain of sand, is in your eye. [...]

Quite often it is a dysfunction in the lubrication which is the cause for the foreign body sensation – the eyes are simply too dry. [...]

Help can only be obtained by restoring the volume of the tear film. The natural fluid lubrication of the eye is restored with the aid of lubricating eye drops and the tear film is sustainably stabilized. Irritation should also diminish as should the feeling of having a foreign body in the eye. [...]

Dry eyes also lead to a foreign body sensation in another way: due to the lack of lacrimal fluid, many of those who are affected wake up with incrustations on their eyes which lead to having real foreign bodies in the eye.

Dr. Axe (2018): "dry eyes put you at a heightened risk for certain eye problems including eye infections, corneal ulcers and other vision problems." Fortunately, Sumers (2014) says that "dry eye doesn't cause blindness", and Zocdoc Answers (n.d.) confirms that "Blindness would be an extremely rare result of dry eyes themselves or even of any of the complications dry eyes could bring on."

A diary of events after the eye exam

A few days after the eye exam, and before I got a chance to start using the artificial tears, the weather was rainy. I noticed that I didn't have much dry eye during those days, nor much rheum at night, presumably due to the humidity. This seems consistent with what online articles say about dry eye—namely, that it's exacerbated by low humidity.

I ordered these omega-3 supplements, which have 700 mg of Algal Oil per capsule. Around 2018 Jul 2, I took my first capsule. After I woke up the next morning, I found that I had a long strand of goop in the corner of my left eye, similar to a wet booger. Since I can't recall having such a thing before, I assumed it was probably due to the omega-3 oil. Fortunately, my eyes felt pretty good.

My dry-eye symptoms were basically absent for the next few days. I hope this was partly due to the omega 3, but it's difficult to say for sure, because these couple of days were the hottest so far this year and were extremely humid. When the weather became cooler and less humid around 2018 Jul 5, my dry-eye issues returned. I hadn't yet taken a second omega 3 capsule, since I wanted to ease into them, so it's possible that my resurgence of symptoms was also partly due to the first capsule wearing off.

Around 2018 Jul 5, I felt like there was something minor in my left eye, although I couldn't see it in the mirror. I took this as an opportunity to try the artificial tears for the first time. I dropped two of them into my left eye, although each time, about half of the tear dripped down below my lower eyelid. The tears felt fine, but I didn't really notice any improvement. Maybe I didn't apply enough. Like with the omega 3, I wanted to ease myself into using the tears.

I took a second omega-3 capsule on 2018 Jul 5. Once again, I had wet eye boogers that night, though they were smaller than the first time. My eyes felt pretty good for the next few days, though again, it was hard to tell if it was due to the omega 3, since the weather was also warming up again. I noticed that I still had red, bloodshot eyes in the middle of the night. Is that bad or pretty normal?

I took my third omega-3 capsule on 2018 Jul 8. That night, I had essentially no rheum at all in the corners of my eyes and no gritty feeling. When I woke up during the night after the first few hours of sleep, I noticed that my eyes were still bloodshot, as usual. I also tried moving my eyes around in various directions to test whether doing so was painful. It seemed subjectively as though there was more "friction" against moving my eyes than normal. Moving my eyes wasn't painful, but it just seemed a bit harder to do than I was used to, maybe because my eyes weren't watering as much? The "friction" decreased as I kept moving my eyes for a few more seconds. Then I went back to sleep.

2018 Jul 9: Eyes were great. No dry-eye symptoms.

2018 Jul 10: Some minor irritation sensations. Had a bit of rheum in the corner of one eye following a nap. Possibly eyes were worsened by poor sleep the previous night? At the end of the day, I took another omega-3 capsule.

2018 Jul 11: No problems other than getting an eyelash in my eye during the shower, which I had to remove with the help of a mirror after the shower.

2018 Jul 12: Irritation in left side of my right eye, possibly due to an upper eyelash that points somewhat inward? Took omega-3 capsule at night.

Eventually I stopped recording my day-to-day progress and figured I would wait and see how things progressed in the coming weeks.

Resolution of symptoms

By the end of July 2018, my dry-eye symptoms were basically gone! I assume this was mostly or entirely caused by taking an omega-3 capsule every other day. The only time my dry-eye symptoms began to re-emerge was when I was a day late in taking an omega-3 capsule, and the symptoms resolved again as soon as I took the capsule. I no longer had appreciable rheum at night, nor did the omega-3 capsules cause soupy eye boogers anymore. My eyes were no longer scratchy at night, and I didn't have foreign-body sensations. I still got eyelashes in my eyes after showering about once every few days, but even these didn't hurt as much as they did before.

I tried the eye drops about twice more, but they didn't seem to do much, and they were no longer necessary due to the omega 3.

Interestingly, I had already started taking omega-3 capsules a few years earlier, in 2015, for general health reasons. However, I stopped bothering after going through two bottles of them because they were somewhat expensive, and they became rancid during the summer by being left in my room at room temperature. Now that I was taking omega-3 capsules again in 2018, I kept them in the fridge.

Spraying water instead of dunking

During summer 2018, on those occasions when I still needed to rinse out my eyes, I realized that instead of dunking my eyes in a bowl full of water, I could use another method. The kitchen faucet can detach from the sink, allowing you to spray wherever you want. Therefore, I could spray water upward into my eyes, creating an effect similar to the spraying water in professional eyewash stations. With this method, I didn't need to go get my bowl and wait for it to fill with water.

Follow-up optometrist visit

In fall 2018, I went back to the optometrist's office to check on my progress. I was seen by a different optometrist this time. The following dialogue sketches some of what we discussed. As before, this is written in dialogue form just to make exposition easier, not because these are even close to exact quotes.

Based on Googling after the visit, my guess is that my eyelid-bacteria issue is (a mild form of) blepharitis, though the optometrist never used that word. American Optometric Association (n.d.) explains that blepharitis "is a common eye disorder caused by either bacteria or a skin condition, such as dandruff of the scalp or rosacea." I get pretty strong dandruff if I don't use anti-dandruff shampoo, so it's plausible that's the explanation in my case.

During a subsequent visit with the optometrist, I asked if my condition was blepharitis, and the optometrist confirmed that it was. And as I had suspected, the optometrist thought my blepharitis was caused by my seborrheic dermatitis, which I had diagnosed by a dermatologist in 2015.

Burning eyes

My dry-eye symptoms were pretty mild during late 2018 and early 2019. The scratchy sensation had pretty much gone away. Instead, however, I occasionally had a different problem at night: my eyes sometimes felt like they had mild acid or salt in them. I assume this is what people call "burning eyes", which can also be a symptom of dry eye and related conditions.

In many cases, dry-eye sensations occur when you have your eyes open without blinking, which allows water to evaporate. However, I found that my burning sensation was only a problem when I had my eyelids closed, trying to fall asleep. Opening my eyes tended to make the sensation fade. Subjectively, it felt like there was either mild acid or salt around my eyes, and closing my eyes allowed the substance to coat my eyes.

Tears generated when yawning often seemed to give rise to the burning sensation. I suppose this could be either because the tears themselves had a high concentration of irritating stuff, or because the skin around my eyes had irritating stuff that the tears drew into my eyes.

I wondered whether the feeling was due to using Avenova, which is hypochlorous acid. However, the sensation also seemed to occur when I stopped using Avenova for a few days.

Rinsing off my eyelids and my eyes with cold water made the burning sensation go away temporarily. However, rinsing out my eyes with water seemed to make the problem worse in the long run. Maybe this is because the tap water disrupted the oils in the tear film? Or maybe it's because the tap water contained dissolved minerals that got left behind once the water itself evaporated, making the salty sensation worse? I have very hard water from my tap, and Denton and Rostron (2013) (p. 197) confirm that "Water from hard-water areas contains dissolved minerals and has a higher osmolarity than 'soft' water."

High osmolarity of the tear film is a standard way of measuring dry eye, and my optometrist told me in a Jan 2019 visit that I still had high osmolarity in one of my eyes.

Given that rinsing out my eyes seems to cause a later increase in symptoms, I wonder whether the severity of my dry-eye issues in spring and summer 2018 was mainly due to a vicious cycle of rinsing out my eyes, leading to dry-eye problems, leading to further rinsing out of my eyes.

Was my rheum due to rinsing with tap water?

By spring/summer 2019, I stopped having much rheum in the corners of my eyes. I also rarely rinsed out my eyes while open anymore; instead, I rinsed off my eyelids with my eyes closed. One day in late Jun 2019, I thought I might have gotten something in my right eye and wanted to rinse out the eye while it was open. I tipped the kitchen sink's pull-out faucet upward and put my open eye into the stream of running water. When I was done, I didn't have a towel at hand, so I just brushed the residual water on my eye away with my fingers. That night, for the first time in many weeks, I had significant rheum, and it was only in my right eye. This anecdote strongly suggests that rinsing out an open eye with water and not drying off my eyelid with a towel afterward was the main cause of my rheum in 2018, since I was rinsing out my eyes with tap water a lot at that time. I don't know whether the rheum comes directly from the minerals in my sink's hard water or whether rinsing out the eye just causes irritation in some other form that leads to rheum.

How I treat my condition as of spring 2019

During spring and early summer of 2019, my dry-eye symptoms were usually mild, though I continued to have occasional burning eyes and foreign-body sensation. Those symptoms varied over time seemingly at random. They would be moderate in severity for a few days and then seemingly absent for the next few days.

I tried Avenova a few times, including continuously for about a month. However, I decided not to continue it for several reasons. Subjectively it didn't seem to help with my symptoms (though that doesn't necessarily mean it didn't improve any objective metrics of eye health). I was nervous about whether it might contribute to burning-eyes sensation, since it's supposed to be left on the eyelids rather than rinsed off. I found the few minutes that it took to apply Avenova each time inconvenient. And Avenova is somewhat expensive: using it daily would cost about $1 to $2 per day based on the price per bottle.

As an alternative, though, I discovered that it helped quite a bit to merely rinse off my eyelashes with my eyelids closed in warm (not hot) water, scrubbing the base of the eyelashes with a finger. Then, again with my eyes closed, I scrubbed my eyelashes a bit with a dry towel. Doing this scrubbing procedure twice per day seemed to help reduce the blepharitic crust at the base of the eyelashes, without requiring Avenova. In the past I had rinsed out my eyes with my eyes open, but as mentioned above, I wonder if this contributed to a worsening of my symptoms. In contrast, rinsing my eyes with my eyelids closed doesn't seem to carry the same downside. I think using warm water might offer the additional benefit that it's kind of like a miniature warm compress, since the rinsing creates a warm and moist environment around my eyes for the ~10 seconds that it takes to scrub.

In the past I had found that eye drops did little to ameliorate my symptoms. However, one night in May 2019, when I had recalcitrant burning eyes, I gave eye drops another shot. They seemed to help, although a few hours later, they left my eyes feeling like they had a bit of dry "paste" in them. For the next several days after using the drops, I had no dry-eye symptoms, so maybe using them was a good move overall.

As of June 2019, I converged on the following approach to treating my dry eye and blepharitis:

• Once per day: omega-3 supplement.
• Twice per day: use my finger to scrub the base of my eyelashes under warm water, while my eyes are closed.
• As needed (maybe ~once per week on average): warm compress. This can help reduce hard oil drops that may appear on my lower eyelids.
• As needed (rarely): eye drops.

Leaving my eyes alone

By late 2019, I stopped scrubbing my eyelashes or using the warm compress except in rare cases. I just took an omega-3 supplement once a day and didn't touch my eyes at all, except to rinse them off in the shower. This (literal) hands-off approach worked well. The feelings of scratchiness and burning in my eyes became relatively rare.

Of course, there's a question about the direction of causation: maybe my eyes were already doing well, as a result of which I felt less need to tend to them. However, I think it probably was the case that not messing with my eyes at all was the cause of some improvement.

When I rub my eyelids, especially with warm fingers, I sometimes generate an oily sphere on my eyelid, presumably by pushing out oil from the lids or something? And through observation, I've noticed that my foreign-body sensation seems to almost always be caused by one of these oily bumps. Whenever I feel like there's something in my eye, I look closely at my eye with a handheld mirror in front of a lamp. If there isn't an actual hair in my eye, there's usually an oily bump (with a diameter roughly the same as the tip of a pen) in my eyelid around where the sensation occurs. I assume that the bump rubs against my eye, creating the scratchy feeling.

Rubbing my eyelids with water might also contribute to rheum as I mentioned earlier, so that's another reason not to rub them.

The main argument for rubbing the base of my eyelashes is to remove the blepharitic gunk there. But that gunk doesn't cause me obvious harm, while rubbing my eyelashes may cause some harm.

Another round of dry eye due to water rinsing

My initial episode of dry eye, described at the beginning of this article, seemed to be set off after I dunked my eyes in tap water. But was rinsing with tap water the cause of the dry-eye symptoms? Or was it just a coincidence? In late 2020, I had another round of bothersome dry eye that appeared to be caused by rinsing my eyes with tap water. This additional instance in which dry eye followed rinsing with water made it seem more likely that rinsing with tap water was indeed the main culprit.

Due to my seborrheic dermatitis, I often rinse my hair and face with Head & Shoulders shampoo. However, the shampoo is pretty strong, and it seems bad to get even small amounts of it in one's eyes. Sometimes while showering I felt a bit of a sting in my eyes that I thought might be due to the shampoo. (The sting may also have been due just to the hard water at my house, which stings a lot more at warmer temperatures.) After I finished showering, I wanted to be sure I rinsed any possible shampoo out of my eyes. So I used the removable faucet of the downstairs sink to spray cold water into my open eyes. I rinsed each eye for ~15 seconds. Then I dried my eyes with a towel.

I was inspired to do this rinsing partly based on the instructions you're supposed to follow in a chemistry lab if you get chemicals in your eyes. In a chemistry lab, it's recommended to rinse out your eyes for much longer than 15 seconds—sometimes for 15 to 60 minutes! However, I currently think that this eye rinsing probably caused my eyes net harm. I was perhaps led astray by those chem-lab recommendations.

Around the time when I started rinsing my eyes out after showering, my dry-eye symptoms got worse. The most notable symptom was a burning sensation at night. Often the sensation was much stronger in my right eye. Sometimes eyedrops helped to soothe it, but sometimes they didn't, and occasionally eyedrops seemed to make the burning more severe. Sometimes the burning was so bad that I had to get up during the night and do the only thing that I knew could temporarily relieve it—rinse out my eyes with cold water in the kitchen sink. But because rinsing my eyes was probably the cause of the problem to begin with, this created a vicious cycle, like a drug user coming back for another hit of the substance that started his addiction.

Eventually I tried the warm compress instead of rinsing my eyes, and the warm compress also seemed to help reduce or prevent the burning sensation, so that offered a way to help break the vicious cycle. Once I began to suspect that rinsing my eyes was the cause of the problem, I tried to do it less often, trusting that my eyes could rinse minor impurities out on their own. After all, animals don't seem to rinse their eyes, and many humans historically probably didn't have access to water to rinse their eyes very often either. So the eyes are apparently pretty good at cleaning themselves. (On the other hand, animals and pre-modern humans also wouldn't have been exposed to shampoo, soap, etc.)

As of early 2021 when I'm writing this section, I still sometimes rinse the outside of my eyes with cold sink water. I keep my eyes closed the whole time and dry them off with a towel before opening them so that stinging water won't even enter my eyes. This seems to not cause dry-eye symptoms but can still reduce the feeling of having trace amounts of Head & Shoulders on my eyelids after I shower. I only rinse with my eyes open as a last resort, if I feel like I got more than a trivial amount of shampoo or soap in my eye. Now that I've implemented this policy for several weeks, the burning sensation in my eyes at night is about 90% reduced from before.

Here's one other odd note about the burning sensation at night. During the night, I usually accumulate some rheum in the corners of my eyes. This is often worse after I've rinsed my eyes, maybe because the minerals in my water become part of the rheum? Sometimes if the rheum feels scratchy when I move my eyes back and forth, I want to remove it, just in case it could irritate or damage the eyes during REM sleep. Typically I would hold up a mirror and use a finger to peel the rheum out of the corners of my eyes. However, for some reason, this process often caused a burning sensation in my eyes. I tried rinsing my fingers with a wet towel first in case they weren't clean enough, and that helped somewhat, but still I found that removing rheum could cause my eyes to feel like they had a bit of acid in them (which, according to my optometrist, is actually a salt imbalance rather than acid). I wonder why this occurred. Anyway, through enough trial and error I found a way of removing rheum that seemed not to cause this side effect as much: I closed my eyes and rubbed gunk off them with a dry towel, rather than using my fingers directly. I have no idea why this towel method would be different from using fingers, and maybe this is just a misleading correlation based on the fact that I discovered the towel method after my eyes were already improving due to not rinsing them out as much.