Dry eyes syndrome is one of the most common eye problems that people are diagnosed with these days. The syndrome can cause itching and can be painful too. In that case, all you want is to feel better. Besides other medication that a doctor will recommend, one way to do it is using a warming eye mask. Warm eye masks are really beneficial in treating the dryness of your eyes.

Some common benefits of a warm eye mask are:

Add moisture: warm eye masks are known to add moisture to your eyes. They can lock the tears in your eye and slow down the tear evaporation.

Prevent natural oils from clogging:

Sometimes the oils produced by your glands can get thick and clog them. Heated masks thin the oils, so they drain easily.

Dry eye syndrome and warmth

Before you buy a warm eye mask for dry eyes, it is important to understand the relation between dry eyes and warmth. A variety of health problems can lead to dry eye syndrome. Basically, you feel dryness in your eyes when there are inadequate tears in your eyes. Tears are responsible for providing moisture to the eyes, to ensure smooth eye functioning. But when there are not enough tears, you feel irritation, the urge to rub your eyes, burning, and redness in your eyes. So, these become the most common symptoms of d\ry eye syndrome. It happens when either your eyes don’t produce adequate tears, or the tear evaporation is fast.

Why pick Heat instead of Cold

There are two types of compressions, warm and cold. For dry eye symptoms, doctors recommend warm compressions. You want to know why? Heat is more effective in treating dry eyes due to many reasons mentioned below:

• Prevents tear evaporation by slowing it down
• Improves circulation of blood
• Aids in calming the eyes
• Contributes to better sleep and comfort
• improve drainage by thinning the gland oils

How to make your warm compresses eye-friendly?

Warm compressing is no rocket science but still, you can mess up if you are not very clear. As it includes warm water, you wouldn’t want to do anything that can cause an injury. So, here are some tips on how you can make your warm compression eye-friendly.

Use plain water:

Plain water is really all you need. People recommend tea bags but there is no need. Don’t even put chemicals or salts in the water. Chemicals can burn your eye or the delicate skin around it. Just warm some plain water and always use a washcloth dipped and soaked in water

Warm not hot: One thing that people often forget or don’t pay attention to while preparing water for warm compression is its temperature. When we say warm, we mean warm, not hot. So, you should never start with boiling water or very hot water. The skin on your eyelid and around it is very sensitive as it’s thin. So, it can burn easily. Instead of getting the benefits of a warm compression, you will end up worsening the condition. So, always take warm water, or eliminate the task of warming water and use a warming eye mask.

Keep essential separate

It is for people who are facing the problem in both eyes. Keep a separate washcloth for each eye along with bowls of water if both your eyes are affected. Keeping things separate will prevent the chances of infection from spreading from one eye to the other.

These are some benefits of a warm eye mask for dry eyes