Severe Dry Eye

Anyone else get dry eye after onset of tinnitus and/or hyperacusis?

 

No. Are you sure you don't have dry eye because of lack of sleep?

 

My sleep is actually decent now somehow so no not cause of that.

 

Staring at a screen?

 

Might be blepharitis which can be a cause of painful dry eyes. Not related to tinnitus though. @Ray552

 

I have severe dry eyes. There's no known link I can see on searching other than with an acoustic neuroma, which is rare. Perhaps worth mentioning to a doctor though.

Dry eyes and tinnitus are both common conditions so the development could be coincidental. However, I do think there is a link with dry eyes and raised inflammation the body. I have wondered at times if the same could be said for some cases of tinnitus. I note amongst those with problems with implantation of a particularly device during surgery, dry eye is common after implantation and sometimes resolves after removal of the failed implant. I have often wondered about a link between tinnitus and these poorly defined issues of chronic raised inflammation. Tinnitus post device implantation is also common, but not so strikingly common as dry eye nor have I heard of it resolving post device removal.

Some people give accounts of tinnitus reducing after cutting out dairy. Dairy free diets are used to lower inflammation in cases of arthritis.

Just a wild theory really. I deal with severe dry eye using a thick gel called vita pos, plus systane balance. Most severe dry eye is down to lack of lipids holding the tears together more than lack of tear production. Mild dry eye can be dealt with using liquid drops alone without the addition of a gel or lipid spray.

 

If you have dry eyes you shouldn't sleep with a ceiling fan on. During deep sleep you sometimes slit your eyes a little and expose them to the blowing air.

 

Similar thing happened to me about the same time as my Tinnitus getting worse. Every day now I wake up and the area around my eye is swollen. Both eyes also sting really painfully sometimes, especially if I cry/get tears in my eyes. Went to opticians and they assured me I wasn't going blind, and that it looked like allergies so to go see a GP. I went to see a GP, and they said that from eyeballing it they weren't worried about it.

 

My dry eye started about six years after my T. But I don't see any reason to think they are related. By the way, four treatments of IPL helped my dry eyes immensely. Here is the only forum I know of for DES:
http://forum.dryeyezone.com/

 

I did while I was using Trobalt (went away after stopping). I recommend the thick lubricating eye ointment to be used at night. It's like in a mini toothpaste bottle and you squeeze a little bit into each eye before you go to bed.

 

Hi @vttbx - this is random and not T related, but I'm considering IPL for dry eye and I saw your post on here saying it really helped you? How are your eyes now? Is it worth doing? I've been struggling with dry eye for a year now.

Steph

 

Since I got hyperacusis I have pain on and off just behind one of my eyes. It gets worse when pressure builds up after accidental noise exposure.

 

I had severe dry eye before tinnitus. I don't know if there's a link but all I know is I've had lots of new onset conditions since I got a surgical implant years ago. The common cause might be stress, but sometimes I wonder about raised inflammation in the body. Severe dry eye is usually caused by a lack of the type of molecule that holds the tear together, rather than a lack of tears. So you need a gel or lipid. I use hycosan night during the day and night and it works well.

 

How do you define "severe" here? What kind of dry eye do you have? Lack of tears in general (Schirmer's zero here) or components missing ones?

I have to drop both eyes with the thick gel ones 2 x an hour, 2x a day Ikervis (Cyclosporine), ointment and eyeshields at night. If you need eye drops every few hours, it's definitely not severe.

 

Yes, because after the onset of tinnitus, what does one find themselves doing most of the day?

Sitting indoors staring at a (computer) screen.

Equals "severe" dry eye.

 

Sjögren's syndrome can give dry eyes, tinnitus and other ear/nose/throat symptoms.
Actually it is what my internist wants to discard by a salivary glands biopsy (the other markers in blood samples are negative).

 

The description of Sjögren's syndrome includes many symptoms that are common in normal people who do not have any health issue.

Does your tinnitus allow you to understand well speech in noise and process sound fast, this is, understand people talking very fast and remember all the bits of information in a conversation? I mean, not missing words, or struggling to follow fast speech etc...

I ask because you wrote "peripheral neuropathy" as the likely cause of your tinnitus.. also, did you get the otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) test?

 

Hello,

Yes I can understand speech. OAEs say I have pre-cochlear affectation.

I have finally abandoned drug induced neuropathy hypothesis.

I now think my issues are more autoimmune related. I am from Sardinia, the land of autoimmune diseases unfortunately. My internist is looking for Sjögren's syndrome related clinical evidence but I think nothing will be finally found.

Probably I have only a sligth immune Th1/Th2 imbalance toward Th1 that will never result in clinical evidence.

Sjögren's syndrome is usually considered as Th1 driven one. Now I am working in this direction with food and supplements, there is a lot of information on this topic in literature.

As example, Resveratrol improves my symptoms and it is known to increase Th2.

 

Yes, that would have shown on the OAEs and there would be also evident symptoms regarding speech recognition.

I am impressed that you are researching so much. My problems derived from noise exposure and, although I still visit doctors to get regular checks and read a bit of medical literature, I lost hope for this to be fixed a long time ago...

 

Hope is the thing that keeps me alive.

It is something my psychologist understood very well. Instead of pushing me to acceptance, which is what most of psychologists and psychiatrists do, invited me to pursue the root cause, due to my analytical personality (I'm mechanical engineer...) which will never accept something that has not clear cause.

Of course this is risky when I will run out of options, but meanwhile is keeping me alive.

I think there is hope for noise induced tinnitus too. In fact, there is more research on this than on tinnitus with unknown cause.

 

That's the right path to go if you do not have a clear cause for your tinnitus. It could be something fixable, even something mechanic related to your jaw, neck, some vein etc... but be careful with tests. Some of them are super loud.

For me the tough part were the hyperacusis cycles, and now is the hearing loss, and the worsening of speech recognition. I try not to think of the amazing hearing I had before, without even knowing it!

There is research, but it gets nowhere. That's why when I pay for an ENT visit and chat with the doctor for half an hour, or an hour, we can discuss options, research etc but today there are no therapeutical options. That's why ENTs often say "learn to live with it, accept it". Some of them (not all) have read research papers, and they are all surgeons, so they tell patients to accept this because even if there is some surgical option it involves risk (for instance, removing an accoustic neuroma which does not grow or grows very slowly).

In my particular case, the downlifting part is the worsening of my hearing and the fact that after accidental noise (even wearing hearing protection) things do not go fully back to baseline. This means there is constant deterioration, even if it is slow.

How do you cope with Barcelona? I mean, going for a walk on a busy street is not an issue for you? It does not affect your tinnitus in any way?

 

The buzzing of Barcelona increases a lot my tinnitus. I always go for pedestrian streets, parks, or seaside when I want to have a walk.

 

That's why I seldom go to Barcelona. It's a very noisy city. There are even more motorbikes than in Italy!

 

I was diagnosed with dry eye syndrome. My worst moment with this was one late night driving on a high speed 3 lane road - one eye suddenly started to sting horribly and the other was getting drier by the second. I had to close one eye, it was so painful. Thought I was going to crash. I had a near empty bottle of mineral water next to me and got the cap off and held it upside down and let the remaining water pour out into my stinging eye. Incredibly it did the trick and I was able to drive on to the service station. I was ok for the rest of the trip. I now keep a full bottle of mineral water next to me whenever driving for this purpose.

When the wind is blowing and I go out for a walk - that can be a problem as it evaporates the moisture in your eye.

But anyway my advice for dry eyes: drink A LOT! Like I mean double what other people drink. Also eat oily fish like mackerel (not canned). I find if I eat 2 fillets of mackerel a week (usually smoked) - my eyes are fine for the whole week. No itch, no stinging. Maybe Omega 3 supplements will work - never tried them - I like to do it the natural way.

Not connected with tinnitus in my case.