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Blurry Vision Clears in Seconds If You Do THIS When It Starts · See Better without Glasses by Dr. Scott Spector

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Your vision goes blurry, you blink hard, and it clears up.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Twenty minutes later, it happens again.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people decide this means that their eyes are getting worse.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Some go and buy a new pair of glasses, and the blurring keeps right on happening.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: So what's really going on?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Scott Spector, and I'm a board certified ophthalmologist.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: In my office, this is by far the single most common complaint that we hear.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's also one of the most misunderstood things.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Relatively easy to treat.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: We can't cure it, but we can certainly help people understand what's happening and help people treat or deal with it on a regular basis.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I like analogy.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: I tell people the eye is like a car.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: There are engine issues and there are windshield issues.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: For example, a cataract is an engine issue.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's inside the eye.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's always blurry.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: When the vision comes and goes, it's a windshield issue.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what's on your windshield.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: The front of your eye is coated in a thin film of tears.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not the tears you cry with, a layer spread across the surface of the eye, and every time you blink, that film is spread across to help clear the surface of your eye.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Light has to come into the eye, so it needs a clear surface, just like the windshield of your car.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: No matter how fancy your car is, if the windshield's not functioning, you're not functioning.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens to the surface of the eye is if we can keep it moist and consistent, vision is much better.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: But when it dries out, you get areas or patches of dryness, and the film or the vision, the surface of the eye just gets harder and harder to see.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Just like you might hit the wash the windshield button in your car, and that will make that thing seems clearer.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: So again, relatively simple.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's it.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's dry eye.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a thirsty eyeball.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: The film just will not stay in place so that the surface of the eye is just not clear.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you could test this for yourself right now.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: It takes about 10 seconds.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Find something across the room that look at like the edge of a book or a picture of your family and look at it for with your eyes wide open for 10 seconds.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Watch what happens to the letters.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I guarantee you they'll get blurry.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now blink hard a couple of times, all the way closed.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And when you open your eyes, things are sharp again.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you have just replaced your tear film.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's the answer.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're washing the windshield.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: We're using our lids as windshield wipers.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't need a stronger prescription.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Your vision's fine.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: You just need to keep the surface clear.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Which raises the obvious question why is the surface of my eye not staying clear?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: There are four things involved, at least.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with the simple one.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is blinking or not blinking.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: When you're reading or driving or looking at your computer, you're not blinking.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ever watch somebody look at their phone, they just have their eyes wide open as they're scrolling Instagram or whatever they're doing.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: They stop blinking, the surface dries, and that's it.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Your vision goes blurry.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Second, age, the older you get, the less oil you make, those glands start to weaken, and so the tears tend to evaporate a little bit faster as we get older.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: The third one is hormones.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Try eye is much more common in women than in men.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's most common in women in their perimenopausal years.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: In addition, a lot of women don't notice this, but during their normal cycle, the first two weeks are estrogen rich, the second two weeks are progesterone rich, and in that situation, the eyes are drier for two weeks out of every month.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And last, the air in the world.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're sitting in your car, you have your air conditioner on, or the heat, and it's blowing right into your face.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Or it's winter time and you don't have any moisture in your home.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: You put all of these things together and it all leads to a dry eye.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it worse in the afternoon than it is in the morning?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: You wake up in the morning, your eyes have been closed, surface has gotten moist, you wake up, it's clear.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Three hours later, four hours later, you look around, completely different.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Same eye, just the surface is different.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's talk about watering.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is the most interesting thing.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is so counterintuitive.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: My eye is dry, but it waters all the time.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: So what happens in that situation is the surface of your eye gets dry and it says to the brain, hey brain, it's dry down here, send some water.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the brain sends a lot of water down, and I mean a lot of water, and so your eyes are constantly tearing, but they don't really actually do the job and they evaporate very quickly.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: So this is again one of the more common things that we deal with.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: A wet eye is usually a dry eye.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if this is the kind of thing you want to do, and I'm kind of excited to be doing this, I will be putting out a video every week and I'll be covering a lot more things.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hit the subscribe button and I'll try to educate you and keep things simple.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, how can we treat this?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, blink on purpose.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean blink.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Think about blinking.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're looking at your phone, you're staring at Instagram.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Remember to close your eyes a few times and make sure you get the surface clear.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, in order to keep the eye clear, you gotta blink and we don't do it on our own.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, put the screen lower.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: This one is fascinating because if you have the screen up high and it's right at your eye level, you have to keep your eyes open more to be able to see it and it evaporates more.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: So just lower the screen a little bit more.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's why laptops are better.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Another simple thing you can do is you can use warm compressors.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can take a washcloth with warm water, you can get one of those things they sell in the drugstore where you throw it in the microwave and heat it up.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And what that does is it helps the surface of your eye feel better.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And last and most importantly, get the air out of your face, whether it be in your car or in your home or in the winter months, maybe you want to put a humidifier next to your bed.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: These are not fancy things.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're just talking about ways to make your eyes more comfortable.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's all there is to it.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: One thing you can also do is you could go to the drugstore and there's an entire collection of eye drops that you can do.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: But get an eye drop and use it anywhere from one to four times a day, and that will help keep the surface of your eye a little bit more comfortable.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Again, what we like to do is make sure you remember to blink because the blink test will tell you exactly what's going on.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, what happens if you blink and it doesn't get better?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: What if it's always cloudy?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that might be an engine issue.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that is where we come in to really help you.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you wake up in the morning and one eye is very blurry and the other one isn't, or you're having trouble driving, or you have trouble seeing street signs and things like that, or you've noticed a significant change in your vision, that's not a windshield issue.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's an engine issue.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: The windshield may be fine, but we need to make sure that we get you in to check and make sure everything else is good.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when we are examining people, the first thing we look at is the tear film because when we measure an eye, whether it be for glasses, contact lenses, or whether we're prepping somebody for eye surgery, we need to make sure that those measurements are good.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And in order for those measurements to be good, we have to make sure that windshield, that cornea, that tear film, all of those components are optimized so that we can get the very, very best measurements.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't just do the simple blink test, we check the entire surface of your eye.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: We double check the windshield first.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: If your vision changes suddenly in one eye, you see a shower floaters or a shadow coming from the side.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's not this video, and it's not a wait and see.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's a call to an eye doctor today.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: If your vision blurs and a blink brings it back, you don't have an eye that's failing you.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: You've got a tear film problem.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's essentially a dry eye.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if everything I treat, that's the one I'd like to have, because again, that's the easiest one to deal with.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And again, it's the most common thing that we deal with.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: People don't really realize how much they put their eyes through on a given day.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: In the years that I've been an ophthalmologist, people have cell phones.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're staring at them.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: People used to sit and read a book, and when they would read a book, they'd blink and they'd close their eyes.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now people are staring at their phones one minute at a time.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say if the normal blink rate is 12 to 14 times a minute, when you're staring at your phone, it's more like six times a minute.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's an obvious situation.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, you have to keep the surface clear.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: One thing before you go, if your eyelids are also itchy first thing in the morning or the edges get crusty and there's a red rim, that's a whole different issue, and we're going to be doing a video on that.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's become a more and more treatable problem.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: We used to call those the itchy burnies, but we now actually have a way to treat that.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: So hit the subscribe button so you don't miss anything that's coming.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking forward to really putting out some information here in a friendly, understandable way.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Try to simplify these things.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's no reason to be afraid of your eyes.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Your eyes are really very treatable and very friendly.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we have great things to help people with.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you in the next one.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's been great talking to you.