Your eyes constantly produce tears in order to keep the surface of your peepers lubricated — more of them show up each time there’s a foreign object in the eyes or whenever you are feeling down, in pain or extremely happy. Did you know that your eyes also constantly produce what’s called rheum which is responsible for the formation of eye gunk?
If you are interested to know the science behind the formation of eye gunk, keep on reading. Below you will learn why each time you wake up in the morning there’s something nasty in the corner of your eyes. Feel free to repost this afterwards so that your family and friends may also know the reason why they have eye gunk in the morning.
Eye sand, eye boogers, sleep dust, sleep in your eyes, sleep sand — these are the many different names of eye gunk. No matter which name you prefer to use to refer to your eye gunk, the fact remains that it is caused by the accumulation and drying up of what eye doctors call rheum.
Other than tears, your peepers also produce a thin or watery type of mucus referred to as rheum. Your eyes actually manufacture it all the time, whether you are wide awake or fast asleep. Rheum is made up of a lot of different stuff, from oils, skin cells to dust. The eyes do not really produce a lot of them so you won’t notice that they’re there.
Each time you blink, excess rheum is naturally forced down your tear ducts. Once there, your body naturally gets rid of rheum. Because you are not blinking when you are sleeping, nothing takes rheum to the tear ducts. It’s for this reason why they gather in the corner of your eyes and harden until such time that you wake up.
In some instances, the amount of rheum produced by the eyes while you are sleeping is more than usual. When you wake up the next day, it’s not unlikely for you to have a copious amount of eye gunk. Sometimes you may also find it on your eyelashes. There are cases, too, in which you may have a hard time opening your eyes due to too much eye gunk.
Eye gunk is not really a problem. However, some people may find it bothersome. You may find yourself having lots and lots of eye gunk in the morning if there is an existing condition that can affect the amount of rheum produced or efficiency of the removal of it. One example of such is a blocked tear duct. Having overactive oil glands is another.
According to eye experts, you can expect to wake up having more eye gunk than everybody else if you have pink eye or conjunctivitis. Actually, it’s not just in the morning when you may end up with eye gunk if you have pink eye, but most time of the day, too. Having a sty may also cause more eye gunk to come into being.
There’s really no need for a problem to exist just for you to end up with more eye gunk than usual. Just about anything that can cause your eyes to produce more rheum can cause the formation of generous amounts of eye gunk. Each time the climate is cold or during allergy season, some people tend to produce more rheum than usual.
You may have noticed that failure to thoroughly remove your makeup the night before can cause a lot of eye gunk to show up in the morning. Eye shadow or mascara can irritate your eyes while you are taking a trip to dreamland, causing your eyes to produce lots of rheum. The same is true if you forget to remove your contact lenses before hitting the hay.
