# Dry Eyes? You Could Be Missing This Key Nutrient

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Doctor Eye Health
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unjt9QcKskE

## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unjt9QcKskE) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00)

Okay, so if you struggle with dry eyes and nothing seems to be helping, right? You've tried artificial tears, maybe you've done warm compresses, perhaps you've even talked to your doctor and gotten prescription medications for dry eye and nothing seems to be helping, then it's possible that a vitamin D deficiency could be making dry eyes worse. Over the years, I've noticed that several dry eye supplements have started to include vitamin D in their formulas. And in case you didn't know this, most doctors do not get formal training in diet, nutrition, or supplementation. So, I dug into the research and here's what I found. So, over the last decade, there have been several publications that show a strong association between low levels of vitamin D and dry eye disease. And it turns out that vitamin D doesn't just play a role in building strong bones, but it helps with controlling inflammation, especially from damaged tissue, such as tissue damage from dry eye. In fact, there are receptors for vitamin D specifically on the ocular surface, including the cornea, the conjunctiva, and the lacrial system. They found that people with lower serum vitamin D concentration had worse dry eye symptoms along with a reduced tear breakup time or basically a worse tear film stability along with more severe corneal staining or damage to the ocular surface. and they found higher levels of inflammatory markers in those tissues. All of which makes a lot of sense to me because we know that dry eye causes a lot of chronic damage to the surface of the eye and the tissues. And if your body doesn't have the right nutrients to control the healing process, then how can you expect it to get much better? Now, I also think it's interesting how a lot of people's dry eye symptoms tend to get worse during the winter months. Now, there are certainly a lot of variables that can go into this such as humidity in the air, right? When it's winter time, the humidity outside usually goes down. Indoors, the heat is on. So, again, the humidity goes down. So, that can definitely play a factor. But a lot of people also tend to stay inside during the winter months. And when we do go outside, we bundle up because it's cold out. And then less of our skin gets hit with sunlight. And so, we're naturally producing less vitamin D on our own. overall putting us all at greater risk of vitamin D deficiency and low vitamin D levels are strongly associated with autoimmune conditions along with anxiety, depression, pain, and fibromyalgia. All of which are conditions that are tightly linked with some more severe cases of dry eye. Okay, so now we have an association between dry eye and vitamin D. There's mechanisms behind it. But do we have evidence that an intervention giving somebody a vitamin D supplement would improve their signs and symptoms of dry eye disease? And yes, there are in fact a few publications that show this. I think probably the best before versus after study I could find came from 2016 where they took people with dry eye syndrome and vitamin D deficiency and gave them all 200,000 international units of vitamin D intramuscularly and found significant improvements in not only their dryey symptoms but improved tearfilm breakup time improved Shurmer's test scores which means they produced more tears and they had reduced corial surface staining all of which was within 2 to 6 weeks after the treatment. Now, of course, not everybody probably wants to get an intramuscular injection of vitamin D to have these benefits, especially when there are plenty of vitamin D supplements available just over the counter and at the supermarket. And thankfully, there are publications also using oral vitamin D supplements specifically for dry eye, such as in this study where they took people who had significant dry eye findings post Lasic refractive surgery and gave them 2,000 international units of vitamin D and reported significant improvements in both dryey signs and symptoms within just one month after the treatment. However, many of these studies are pretty small. we're talking about 100 participants or less. And some of these studies uh don't even have a control group. So, as always, we need more research on this. But, nonetheless, most of these studies do agree on an association, a mechanism, and even modest improvements with intervention. Okay. So, now the big next question you're probably asking, are you vitamin D deficient or low in vitamin D? And that's a really good question. Many studies have been published that estimate anywhere from 40 to 80% of the world's population is deficient or is low in vitamin D. And there's many variables to this. First of which is how much time we spend indoors along with skin pigmentation, the clothing that you wear, and even the latitude or location on the globe in which you live. So, as a

### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unjt9QcKskE&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00)

bedding man in Vegas, I could probably safely assume that most people are probably at least a little bit low in their vitamin D levels. But if you want to be objective about this and find out really where your levels are at, you can of course talk to your local doctor, your GP or primary care physician. Ask them, "Hey, can you run labs for me? I want to know if my vitamin D levels are low, deficient, or if they're at a normal range. " Or, if you'd like, you can always purchase labs online. They usually have blood testing kits that you send in the mail and then you get an email back telling you where your vitamin D levels are at. I've even used one of these myself and I'll put a link in the show notes for you if you want to get access to one of those kits. So now, how do we get more optimal levels of vitamin D in our system? Well, there are several ways we can do this. First of which is to naturally get more sunlight exposure on our skin. Two is to consume foods that are fortified with vitamin D. Or three, direct vitamin supplementation. Personally for me, I'm trying to get more natural sunlight exposure to my skin throughout the week because I spend so much time uh working indoors, but it is difficult to give a strict guideline recommendation around sunlight exposure for vitamin D production because there's just so many variables, right? It could be somebody's age, their skin pigmentation, the season, and the time of day outside. There's just a lot of variables. But there have been estimated calculations around 15 to 20 minutes a day of sunlight exposure to your hands, your arms, your legs, and your face would generate around a,000 international units or IUs of vitamin D a day. Sunlight exposure doesn't just help with vitamin D production, but sunlight also contains levels of red light and infrared light, which many studies are showing positive benefits for many different parts of the body, but may in fact help with a lot of eye health issues, too, which is a whole other topic that we've covered in previous videos here on the channel, and we plan to cover more on going on in the future. So, if you're part of that 90% of people who watch the channel regularly but don't hit the subscribe button, now is a perfect time to subscribe to the channel so that you don't miss our future videos covering red light and going more in depth on how that may be beneficial for the eyes, including dry eye disease. But of course, you do also want to be mindful about the negative parts of sunlight exposure, including harsher levels or chronic exposure of ultraviolet or UV light exposure, especially to the eyes and the delicate tissues around the eyes. But again, a good rule of thumb is to get outside and have sunlight exposure to your arms, your hands, and your face for maybe at least 15 to 20 minutes. But of course, again, this can be really tough if it's out of season or it's really cold outside. So, that is where fortified foods and supplements come in. Certainly, uh, fortified foods include things at the supermarket like yogurt, dairy milk, plant milks, and even some things like orange juice will have vitamin D fortified in it. Otherwise, small amounts of vitamin D are also found naturally in fatty fish, eggs, and even mushrooms. But a fun fact is that you can get almost 10 times the amount of vitamin D from eating mushrooms that are first sliced and then set outside in the sun to rest for about 15 minutes all the way up to 2 hours depending on the time of day, the amount of sun, and of course the type of mushroom it is. But still, that's kind of nuts. I'm going to have to start resting my mushrooms outside for a little bit before I cook with them. Okay, so now let's talk about vitamin D supplementation. Because if you go to the store, you can find a wide variety of concentrations of vitamin D supplements. It can be down as 5 600 units all the way up to 10,000 units or more. Usually people who are taking the 5,000 units or 6,000 units a day are people who have tested true deficiency in vitamin D. or if they're taking the 10,000 units or more, like 25,000 units, those are usually taken once a week, and they're only taking them until their vitamin D levels reach an adequate level. At that point, they usually drop down to a maintenance dose of around 1,000 to 2,000 units a day. But again, those are more for people who have been truly tested and found to be deficient in vitamin D. However, usually if somebody is concerned even just of mild vitamin D deficiency or kind of suboptimal levels of vitamin D, then supplementing with around 600 to 800 international units a day is considered sufficient. Which is why I think a lot of the dry eye supplements on the market that contain vitamin D have around that 600 international unit mark because it's largely considered not only safe but also effective. at least if somebody is taking it consistently for several months. But I think it's important to mention all of this because taking too much of a supplement is a real thing. There are cases, although it's rare, of

### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unjt9QcKskE&t=600s) Segment 3 (10:00 - 12:00)

having hypervitaminosis of vitamin D, which usually are again rare, but they occur more for people who are taking those higher levels of supplements. They're taking 10,000 uh 25,000 units of vitamin D every day without any supervision. And thankfully, again, it doesn't happen very often, but there are cases of people who've had not only hypercalcemia, but even kidney disease from taking too much vitamin D supplement. So, if somebody does have true vitamin D deficiency, then it's best to be taken care by a qualified healthcare professional. But in general, around that 600 to 800 international units of vitamin D3, that is considered kind of safe and sufficient for most people. Now, I'm not saying go out and start taking vitamin D supplements, but it's something I think people should be aware of, especially with how much sunlight they may or may not be getting every single day. And I think it's just good to know why the vitamin D is starting to be added in a lot of the supplements for dry eye disease. I personally don't know many eye doctors who order tests to check for vitamin D levels, but it is something kind of makes me curious about and wonder if maybe we should be considering doing this if we have patients who are not responding to treatments like we would expect. Now, dry eye is not the only area in research where they're connecting vitamin D deficiency and the risk for certain eye health issues, things like glaucoma, macular degeneration. And there's even some studies looking into if vitamin D affects risk for children in developing myopia or nearsightedness. However, the interventional studies for these conditions where they supplement vitamin D, they're not noticing as much of a significant impact on the disease, if at all. So, it makes me wonder if the vitamin D deficiency is just an indirect biioarker about how much natural sunlight people are getting. And again, we know that red light and infrared light that is naturally in sunlight has been found to be beneficial for mitochondrial health, for inflammation, and for several of these ocular conditions. So, to learn more about red light and infrared light, and how that affects the eyes, including for dry eye, check out our full video series coming over here to this side. Otherwise, dry eye, very complicated. Don't just take my word for it. Talk to your local eye doctor and get evaluated. Make sure that everything is being managed appropriately. Otherwise, thank you for being here. Keep an eye on it. We'll see you in that video.

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*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/43181*