Get Enough Rest, Your Eye Needs It

Difficulties getting enough rest or sleep is an issue that is quite common among geriatrics. For those who may not be in active service and spend the majority of their time at home, the body does not do enough to want to rest or sleep so much when night comes and so most of them either has difficulties sleeping or would wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to sleep again.

For the elderly, most of them suffer from dry eye which is purely due to aging and so with apnea added, well it only becomes a matter of time before things start to flare up, but in the youth, this is quite easy to catch because staying up most often is deliberate, either to binge watch a movie or outing with friends partying.

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Naturally, just like any part of the body needs to rest and regain lost energy during the day so does the eye needs its rest, when we fail to get that rest, our tear production now gets affected and then we start to experience symptoms of dryness on the eye which mostly comes in the form of burning sensation. If this discomfort is not enough to get you to fold the laptop or turn off the tv or put your fon away and sleep then the body will continue to give you more signs.

Next would be the eye aching. This is mostly a referred pain as the cardiac output increases resulting in acute hypertension which is followed by headaches which then cause the eye to ache because the blood supply from the hypertension also goes to the eye and the fact the eye is a part of the brain or the head. Most often getting some rest fixes the issue quickly however if it has become a habit for you then you may need tear supplementation as well as skin care because soon you would experience dark circles around the eye, and it only gets worse as you continue to deprive yourself of enough rest.

Your intraocular pressure may also likely go up which could result in acute situations of ocular hypertension, if this becomes consistent and chronic you could end up exposing yourself to damage to the optic nerve similar to how things go down in the cases of glaucoma. You could also experience acute cases of conjunctivitis where the eyes become reddened as the vessels get engorged with blood partly due to increased cardiac output and partly due to the eye feeling generally stressed. So when it comes to the eye, getting enough rest can't be overemphasized.

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Conclusion

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Further Reading

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_{West, S. D., & Turnbull, C. (2018). Obstructive sleep apnoea. Eye (London, England), 32(5), 889–903. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41433-017-0006-y.}

_{Baillieul, S., Revol, B., Jullian-Desayes, I., Joyeux-Faure, M., Tamisier, R., & Pépin, J. L. (2019). Diagnosis and management of central sleep apnea syndrome. Expert review of respiratory medicine, 13(6), 545–557. https://doi.org/10.1080/17476348.2019.1604226.}

_{Lee, S. S. Y., Nilagiri, V. K., & Mackey, D. A. (2022). Sleep and eye disease: A review. Clinical & experimental ophthalmology, 50(3), 334–344. https://doi.org/10.1111/ceo.14071.}

_{García-Sánchez, A., Villalaín, I., Asencio, M., García, J., & García-Rio, F. (2022). Sleep apnea and eye diseases: evidence of association and potential pathogenic mechanisms. Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 18(1), 265–278. https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.9552}