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COVID-19 and Your Eye Health

What are some symptoms of COVID-19 in regards to your eyes? The most reported eye related symptoms is conjunctivitis. This can be very mild or very intense depending on how your immune system responds to the virus. It can be accompanied by some tearing, thick mucousy discharge, swelling of the eye lids and some blurry vision. This will generally last somwhere between 7-14 days and will not result in most cases will not result in any permanent damage to the eye. Eye drops prescribed by your optometrist can help to lessen the symptoms but will not stop the infection. This can be a source for the disease to spread so good hand hygiene is recommended as you will likely rub...

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Mask Associated Dry Eye

A commonly asked question that has recently been coming up at every eye examination relates to increased dry eye sensation since COVID-19 started. My patients have been reporting a significant increase in stinging, redness, burning, tearing and fogging vision. While the Alberta Association of Optometrists have published reports that up to 7/10 Albertans could be suffering from dry eye, the amount of complaints I am getting is out of the ordinary for this time. So today I would like to address possible issues that may be causing these changes. Mask induced dry eye (MADE) One of my University of Waterloo optometry school professors recently published an article (found here on Global News) discussing this. Wearing a mask has been proving...

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Are long days staring at the computer giving you dry eyes? You're not alone.

Did you know that Southern Alberta and Saskatchewan are some of the driest environments in Canada? If you are like me and suffer from dry eyes then you are probably not surprised. A recent survey done by the Alberta Association of Optometrists indicates that as many as 70% of Albertan’s suffer from some type of dry eye related symptoms. Dry eyes can result from many different factors and typically are a combination of a few. Poor Blink rate - here is a fun experiment you can do on your peers, go find someone in your work place and have a conversation with them face to face. While conversing try and count how many times they blink in 10 or 30...

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