Don't rub your eyes! You can suffer all these consequences

Rubbing the eyes is a reflex action and one that we have assumed as something completely normal, but it has a series of risks and consequences that can even make us lose sight of the eye, due to deformation of the cornea or infections.

The phrase “do not touch your face with dirty hands” is long before COVID-19, and the main reason is because of the amount of bacteria that we accumulate on our hands, especially on the nails, throughout all day and as all those microorganisms reach our face, eyes and mouth, causing infections, pimples and others.

Main risks of rubbing the eyes

In the previous paragraphs we have made it clear that rubbing our eyes is not a good idea, so below we are going to expand the information and tell what consequences we can suffer if we continue rubbing our eyes, with clean or dirty hands.

Corneal injuries

By squeezing and rubbing our eyes we are putting our visual health at risk, since any foreign body that we have inside the eye will get stuck in the eyeball. In the case of sand or dust, when rubbing it, we will be scratching the cornea, causing damage to our vision. This is because, although we think we are doing it delicately, that eyelash, that insect or that grain of sand is being scraped against the surface of our eye.

The best option is to use physiological saline, wash the eye with fresh water or keep it closed until the body’s own cleaning system generates tears that will clean the inside of the eye.

Un hombre frotándose los ojos por estrés

Deformations

That simple gesture of rubbing our eyes when we are sleepy or itchy due to some circumstance, can deform our eye. If it is true that to reach this extreme situation, you must rub many times a day for several weeks a year and with some pressure on the eyeball.

If our profile fits with the brief definition above, be careful, because we can cause a deformation on the ocular surface and also a keratoconus that consists of an eye disease that causes significant vision problems.

Eye spill

It has nothing to do with retinal detachment. The ocular effusion happens when when rubbing with a certain intensity we break some capillary that makes up the tissue of the eye. It is there when there is a reddening of the area, even producing blood stains on the eyeball , and that will be the unequivocal sign of an eye spill.

The most advisable thing is to go to the doctor so that the situation could be complicated. It is best to go to a specialist when we begin to notice some kind of annoying itching, pain, irritation and the like. Since what may seem silly to us can end up being something serious and with consequences for life.

Increased eye strain

We must imagine our eyes as a balloon or a ball. Both examples have a pressure that is exerted from the inside and from the outside to maintain that shape, because our eye is similar and if we rub them hard again and again what we achieve is to increase that pressure, which can cause us serious damage.

So serious is the situation that glaucoma patients are forbidden to rub their eyes, as are patients with high eye pressure. Glaucoma , for those who do not know it, is an eye disease where the patient loses sight due to damage to the secondary optic nerve. And in turn, this damage is usually caused by an increase in eye pressure.

Un hombre en una tienda de campaña ha decidido frotarse los ojos

Infections

It is one of the most common consequences after rubbing ourselves with dirty hands, sweatshirt sleeves, towels that we have used for several days, etc. Like the toothbrush that we have to change when we have a cold, so as not to multiply the bacteria, the towels we must change very often if we usually clean our face and eyes with them.

By rubbing our eyes we are bringing these bacteria from our hands to the eyelid, eyelashes, tear duct and surrounding skin. We cannot take our whole body equally, the skin on our hands is more resistant to bacteria than our eyes, for example.

The protection against germs of our eyes is rather low , hence they can get bad quite easily. It is also true that we are not all the same, in fact, having long bangs and always close to the eye encourages the appearance of infections, no matter how clean our hair is.

Alternatives to rubbing your eyes

There are no alternatives as such, beyond not rubbing our eyes, washing with fresh water, using physiological saline and wearing sunglasses to protect them from foreign agents such as dust, sand, insects and others. Likewise, having the bangs away from the eyes , and from the face in general, is also a good option, since otherwise the eyes could be receptors of the bacteria that we leave in the bangs when we touch them with dirty hands, for example.

If it’s itchy from allergies, rubbing increases itching because it releases more allergens . In case of being a specific annoyance, it is best to wash with water or add drops of physiological serum and keep the eye closed (we can cover it with gauze and paper tape) and let the eye cry and clean itself.

If the discomfort increases and we see that our eyeball is red, it could be conjunctivitis and it is contagious between people, so we must go to the doctor. If we see that the white area of our eye is yellow, it is a sign of jaundice (high bilirubin level), we should also go to the doctor.

Specialists recommend blinking a lot to keep the eyes hydrated, cleaning with saline solution, cleaning the eyelids, eyelashes and skin around the eyes with suitable products, using artificial tears once or twice a month to hydrate and clean the inside of the eye and Above all, clean our hands very often.

Likewise, whenever we notice something strange in the eye, the first thing is to wash our hands and rinse the face and eyes with clean and fresh water, dry without pressing and use a single dose of serum to clean the inside of the eyeball.