Best Way to Wash Your Eyes | Dr. Jeff Goldberg & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | How do you wash an eye properly?

00:00:04.160 | Do you use soap and flush it with water or do you just flush it with water, or should

00:00:07.520 | you not even do that?

00:00:08.520 | Should you use saline?

00:00:09.520 | I realize these might sound like low-level questions, but these are the things that people

00:00:12.040 | deal with on an all-too-frequent basis.

00:00:15.520 | For most people, most of the time, actually, the eyes are a very good, clean environment.

00:00:21.320 | Actually our tears contain enzymes that help break down bacteria and bacterial toxins.

00:00:29.520 | For most people, regular eye-washing doesn't have to be any part of their standard routine.

00:00:35.520 | In terms of the surface of the eye, the part of your eye, the conjunctiva, over the whites

00:00:40.440 | of the eyes, underneath the eyelids, anything underneath the eyelids, it's pretty self-cleaning,

00:00:44.920 | and actually our tear production and blinking is very good at keeping our eyes clean.

00:00:51.080 | The eyelids, eyelashes, can be another story, and especially as we age, our skin is breaking

00:00:58.840 | down a little differently than when we were younger.

00:01:01.720 | You can develop what we sort of nickname "scurf," which is little dead skin bits that accumulate

00:01:07.460 | around the eyelashes.

00:01:09.000 | A lot of people develop what we call blepharitis, which just means inflammation of the eyelashes.

00:01:16.040 | For that, doing some eye scrubs is a good idea.

00:01:18.640 | They actually sell little pads that you can buy that you rip open and you can use to lightly

00:01:24.760 | clean the eyelashes.

00:01:26.960 | You can also just use like a No More Tears Baby Shampoo.

00:01:31.400 | Just pump a little bit into the palm of your hand once or twice a day, dilute it with a

00:01:37.640 | little water and under the sink, and either with your finger or an edge of a washcloth,

00:01:42.240 | just very lightly rub the eyelashes.

00:01:43.560 | What I like to do- With the eyes closed.

00:01:45.920 | With the eyes closed, and don't scrunch them closed too tight because you're actually burying

00:01:50.640 | the eyelashes, the roots of the eyelashes when you really scrunch closed.

00:01:56.160 | Just gently close your eyes, just real gentle closure, and then just lightly scrub.

00:02:00.800 | It shouldn't be abrasive.

00:02:01.800 | You're not trying to exfoliate the eyelids or eyelashes in any way.

00:02:06.520 | Just lightly rub with that kind of dilute No More Tears Baby Shampoo, and that can really

00:02:11.400 | help people with their eye comfort.

00:02:14.560 | If you feel like you've got something in your eye, your ideal eye wash is actually going

00:02:19.320 | to be a sterile saline solution, a saltwater solution that they sell little bottles over

00:02:25.120 | the counter, eye wash solutions like that.

00:02:28.400 | A lot of people who wear contacts will have that kind of eye wash solution, just a sterile

00:02:32.920 | saline eye wash.

00:02:34.680 | Just pure saltwater.

00:02:35.680 | It doesn't have to have any other chemicals or preservatives in it.

00:02:39.100 | You can, of course, use- Not actual seawater or saltwater.

00:02:43.520 | Not saltwater, thank you.

00:02:45.120 | Not saltwater out of your salt pool, not saltwater out of the ocean, but like a saline saltwater

00:02:50.920 | that's available in a sterile.

00:02:52.640 | Now you can also just use artificial teardrops and some of those come in non-preservative,

00:02:57.360 | some of those come in preserved versions.

00:02:59.440 | Those are all also completely safe to use in the eye.

00:03:02.680 | And there you can sort of spritz into your eye, hold the lid open and give it a little

00:03:07.200 | spritz.

00:03:08.240 | If you feel like you've got something in your eye, a piece of dirt or a lash that's not

00:03:11.760 | coming out, just to rinse it.

00:03:14.040 | But having a regular routine, you're not going to hurt anything with the occasional eye rubbing.

00:03:20.520 | We all do these things just kind of as a, even a nervous habit or just absentmindedly,

00:03:26.400 | you might scratch your arm or rub your eyes or things like that.

00:03:30.080 | That's fine.

00:03:31.080 | You're not going to hurt anything.

00:03:32.760 | There are conditions where people sort of develop kind of almost like a psychological

00:03:37.720 | habit.

00:03:38.720 | There are certain conditions where people actually do too much eye rubbing.

00:03:41.880 | It can be dangerous if you're in that group.

00:03:43.960 | But for the regular run of the mill, everyday, occasional eye rubbing, fine.

00:03:49.200 | If you certainly, if you get a lash in there and you're trying to rub it and blink it and

00:03:52.680 | tear it out.

00:03:53.680 | And again, in that situation you can use some artificial tears, wetting drops, saline drops.

00:04:00.840 | Those would be the way to do it.

00:04:01.720 | [Music]

Best Way to Wash Your Eyes | Dr. Jeff Goldberg & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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