Dr King:
Safety.org. No, it’s a serious website.
Dr. Cha:
I drop safety.org.
Dr. King:
I drop safety.org. We have to, we have to do a PSA.
Dr. Cha:
Oh, I should send you a video
Dr. King: and I don’t be in the prostate test.
Dr. Cha:
We have a video of a Christmas tree cataract. Would that be useful in this?
Dr. King:
Oh, That’s so cool. Yeah. Ya
Speaker:
See that? I can’t
Dr. King:
I am not lying.
Speaker:
I’m, I’m speaking for myself.
Dr. King:
Presbyopic, but I’m not.
Dr. King:
Hi, I’m Dr. King.
Dr. Cha:
And now I’m Dr. Cha.
Dr. King:
Welcome to Days of Our Eyes. Today we’re gonna cover a, let’s just say a stocking full of stuff. It’s holiday time, so we wanna go through some eye drop tips and some possible tinsel tragedies. If you’re interested in hearing about Christmas eye injuries and some other stuff that’s going on. Stay tuned.
Dr. King:
First of all, hi again, because we haven’t been around for a while. He was busy getting his hair cut. We wanna go over a few things with you. First is kind of serious. There’s been a lot in the news lately about these tainted eyedrops where people are using artificial tears and lubricant drops and they’re like losing their vision and some people have lost their lives.
So we just wanted to give you some, in some insight into that. Not every drop is affected. There’s a lot of safe drops to use out there. Most of these drops were produced in off-brand facilities, mostly outside the US. All the name brand drops that you see that you’ve been seeing on the shelves for years, they’re pretty much unaffected
because those folks, those name brands have their own manufacturing facilities.
Where you run into problems is when you buy something that’s kind of an off brand generic brand because what they do is they just farm that out to somebody else to make it and then they just put their label on it. There’s a great website called…
Dr. Cha:
Is it Eye drops? Eyedrop safety.org.
Dr. King:
We went over this
Dr. Cha:
Oops, sorry.
Dr. King:
Yes, it’s called eyedrop safety.org that you can check it out and that will give you some good information about that.
Dr. King:
Have you heard anything about these cataract eyedrops?
Dr. Cha:
Not since, you know, around the campfire where we tell spooky ghost stories.
Dr. King:
Patients have been asking me about drops that you can put in your eyes to get rid of your floaters and cataracts and all this kind of stuff.Guys, we haven’t had anything
in professional education that’s talked about any of these working since I started practicing decades ago.
Dr. King:
They’ve always talked about an eye drop to stop or slow down cataracts or reverse cataracts and nobody’s ever been able to do it. So be very, very careful when you read this stuff.At this time, at the time we’re filming this, we don’t know of any of those that work. But you know, if there’s some published studies, we’ll try and find them.
Dr. King:
Same goes with the cod liver oil trend folks.Patients are telling me that
they’re rubbing cod liver oil on their eyelids and stuff to get rid of stuff in their eyes.
And I’m like, is it formulated for the eyes? No, I just buy it at the store. It’s like, mm, I know. Cod liver oil is a powerful antioxidant and taken internally, it can do a lot of good things, but when you’re using anything around the eyes, I just urge you to make sure that it’s sterile because the eye does not have the same protection against infection as your skin.
So if you’re putting anything that can get into the eyes, think twice about it. Make sure it’s prepared for ocular use. That’s all I have is to say about that.
Dr. King:
Moving on, we wanted to get in some tinsel tragedies, some, some glitter glitches.
Dr. Cha:
Glits. That was nice.
Dr. King:
I know, I just came up with that.
Dr. King:
So you ever seen any Christmas related injuries or tragedies?
Dr. Cha:
Actually, you know, I had a patient the other day, he’s getting better.
Thank, thank the Lord. He got hit in the eye with a branch. You know, we hear that all the time and I imagine this time of year with, and people getting out their trees or picking up a tree, maybe you’re not around trees all the time.
So we get that one time a year where you, you know, the prevalence of something like that happens whenever we get hit by a tree, you know, in the eye. Get, get, get hit by anything really. There’s always, you know, cause of concern. We wanna make sure that the vision’s not affected. If there’s any discomfort, redness, maybe discharge.
Dr. King:
Make sure it didn’t penetrate the eye.
Dr. Cha:
There you go.
Dr. King:
Pierce into it.
Dr. Cha:
Yeah.
Dr. Cha:
The best course of action. Anytime you’re concerned about the eye, go see an eye doctor. Of course, if it’s emergent, go to the emergency room, right? Yeah. This patient, he
wasn’t doing too bad. But mainly we wanna watch for his infections, right?
Dr. King:
Yeah. Because who knows? I mean, there’s germs, whether it’s a a, a artificial or a real tree. You know, you, you’re still gonna have bacteria, fungus, all kinds of stuff and that’s, that’s the big thing. Yeah.
Dr. Cha:
Yeah. Thankfully this patient didn’t really have any infection going on, but it whacked him hard enough, not enough to poke him through. Which is of course what we always look for.
We don’t want your eye leaking out.
Dr. King:
No That is an emergency room. Go now. Do not pass. Go. Do not collect $200.
Dr. Cha:
Yes. Yes. But he had it pretty gnarly.He had a hyphema, which is, he had blood kind of floating around inside the eye. But he came back, made a full recovery, had a little scar from the branch that hit him, but at least he kept it.
Dr. King:
Yep. We’re not telling you to wear safety goggles around your tree, but think twice. You know, the kids run through the room and the ornaments get knocked off and you’re walking around picking ’em up and swinging around. We get at least one patient a year with that. So easily avoid it. Just a little care taken. Okay.
Dr. King:
Also holiday party season. So we all wanna dress up and you know, lots of sparklies going into the new year and all that kind of stuff. So I wanna talk about face glitter. Face glitter’s, not eye glitter. That stuff is, you know, it’s designed for on the cheeks and things like that if you look at it under a microscope. But a lot of that stuff are hexagons. That’s a six-sided geometric figure. That’s six points. And they’re metallic to be reflective.
Dr. King:
Even if they’re plastic, they’re still sharp edges. So they don’t just bounce off the eye. They tend to stick glitter on the eyelids and eyebrows. Not a good plan. Okay. I’ve had to pick that outta eyeballs before. Do a little down on the cheeks. Don’t get carried away with it. All good. Now, you’ll see shadows. That shimmer and glitter, that’s different. I’m talking about the actual face glitter where you like,
Dr. King:
Right.
Dr. Cha:
You can almost count it. Yeah.
Dr. King:
Yeah.
Dr. Cha:
Well what happens when you know, maybe they’re doing their best and they went out all out with the glitter and then it got into, what do you suggest patients do? I guess until they get seen by us.
Dr. King:
Cry a lot.
Dr. Cha:
Actually
Dr. King:
Flush the eyes. You wanna try and rinse it out of there. Don’t try and pick it out. But remember it’s sharp edges so if you scooch it, it actually can dig in but try and flush it just with some saline or something like that. And it’s something to go along with face glitter. And it went outta my head
Dr. Cha:
I’m so sorry.
Dr. King:
It’s okay. No, it’s my apologies for that. That’s so timers sometimes I remember, sometimes I don’t, I need more coffee.
Dr. King:
Let’s bust that myth.
Speaker:
So I was going through TikTok and
Dr. King:
TikTok. There we go. That is the fount of information.
Dr. Cha:
Yeah
Dr. King:
It’s just that’s,
Dr. Cha:
That’s the thought of the century
Dr. King:
If it’s on TikTok, it must be true.
Speaker:
Well, as an impressionable millennial
Dr. Cha:
Nice.
Speaker:
What am I? Gen Z?
Dr. King:
You’re actually Gen Z.
Dr. Cha:
You’re like Gen Z
Speaker:
Okay. As an impressionable Gen Z’ier
Dr. King:
There’s only one millennial in this room and it ain’t you.
Speaker:
I saw people putting Vaseline. Oh dear. Under the eyelids under for winter irritation. They were also using Neosporin and basically any kind of petroleum jelly. I know this goes back to the drops, but I’m just curious on y’all’s thoughts about that.
Dr. King:
Well, if you’re talking Vaseline, it’s a petroleum product. It doesn’t say petroleum jelly for nothing near your eyes is different tissue. That’s mucus membrane in here and stuff. Petroleum is toxic to that. So we don’t recommend. I understand the concept of putting something under here for chapping and irritation.
Actually. That that part is sound. Vaseline’s not the best choice. If you’re talking Neosporin, that’s usually not in a petroleum base. Neosporin is usually in a glycerin base. Glycerin can be used around the eyes. It’s in several artificial teardrops. But you, if you’re gonna put it on the eye from this bone to this bone, you want it to be on a, a product that’s made for the eyes for ocular use.
Right. For sure. There is a version of Neosporin ointment. There is an antibiotics ointment that is made for the eyes. They’re perfectly okay to do that with. But I would not use a petroleum product. Hmm.
Yeah, it’s just, I mean it’s, it seems to be fine and people did it for a long time, but generally speaking it’s not a good idea. And once again yeah, it’s not sterile.
Dr. Cha:
Yeah.
Dr. King:
You know, think about the grimy fingers in there. How long has that can of Vaseline been in that drawer? I’m just saying it’s been open for how long and now you’re gonna stick it in your eye. I don’t think so. ’cause nobody goes out and buy new Vaseline to use around eyes.
Dr. Cha:
You get a jug at a time. Right.
Dr. King:
Yeah, yeah, that stuff doesn’t spoil. But it sure as heck will grow bacteria.
Dr. Cha:
Right. I mean like when it comes to topical creams or anything, you know, we use on our skin, they usually delineate what could be used on the skin versus what could be used on the face skin. And then even the ones on the face, they say, don’t put it in your eye.
Dr. King:
Right. And that means from this bone to this bone. ’cause the eyelid isn’t the same as cheek skin even. That’s why even your dermatologist will tell you, we use this from here down. We don’t use it from here up. Different story. That’s the same.
Dr. King:
You wanna hear a funny one, y’all? I remember when I was a kid that women, oh gosh, should I even say this? Women used to put preparation H hemorrhoid brain under here. Yes. Because it shrinks. It’s for bags under the eyes. They would put it under Here.
Dr. Cha:
It’s hydrocortisone, right?
Dr. King:
No, it’s a, it’s a vasal constrictor. So it shrinks.
Dr. Cha:
Oh
Speaker:
It’s like plexaderm.
Dr. King:
So it reduces bags. So they would put it on there when they would go out
Speaker:
Free Botox.
Dr. King:
Yeah. Don’t do it.
Speaker:
Interesting. Okay.
Dr. King:
But think about that.
Speaker:
Good to know.
Dr. King:
But cream on the eyes
Speaker:
They love it.
Dr King:
Once again, I don’t think they’re buying a new tube to do that. So that’s why we made this episode about, if it’s not for the eyes, don’t use it on the eyes. Okay. Yes. Don’t use hemorrhoid cream on your eyes, please.
Dr. Cha:
Please, thank you.
Dr. King:
So in addition, we even have the holiday edition of eye conditions. Take it away.
Dr. Cha:
Okay. We’ve talked about cataracts, you know,cataract surgery in previous Videos ad nauseam. Yes. The lens inside
the eye, it gets cloudy, but believe it or not, there are different areas or different structures of that lens that can get cloudy.
Dr. King:
Like different layers.
Dr. Cha:
People’s cataracts look different when they come. It could be, you know, nice and milky in the center. It could be nice and brown all the way around.
Dr. King:
I don’t think brown is nice
Dr. Cha:
But like a mocha color almost. Anyway, they can have little spokes that radiate look like, like, you know, looking like a clock almost or a wheel. But there is a special type of cataract called the Christmas tree Cataract it literally,
Dr. King:
Who new?
Dr. Cha:
Yeah, it’s crazy. I remember I, I was working here. I started working here almost a year ago. Over a year ago now.
Dr. King:
Over A year.
Dr. Cha:
Yeah.
Dr. King:
He’s an old timer now.
Dr. Cha:
We had a patient come in and I was shocked. I’m like, holy cow, I’ve only heard about this in textbooks and stuff. It looks, it literally looks like someone put like tensile inside their cataract. And this thing is only like at most like 10 millimeters wide by like,
Dr. King:
That would be a big one.
Dr. Cha:
Yeah. Actually more like eight millimeters wide by maybe like three millimeters like deep. So this is like, you know, microscopic, you know how much tinsel we’re putting into the cataract. But it’s, I will say it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful.
Dr. King:
It’s really cool.
Dr. Cha:
Yeah
Dr. King:
It’s the only good Christmas tree to have in your eye.
Dr. Cha:
There you go.
Dr. King:
The Christmas tree in your living room should not be in your eye, but a Christmas tree cataract. We can take care of that.
Dr. King:
We hope you guys enjoyed what we had to say and learned a little something. And glad we could share some holiday season eye stuff. Everything from trees poking your eyes to trees growing in your eyes. Till next time, I’m Dr. King.
Dr. Cha:
I’m Dr. Cha
Dr. King:
Take care.