Glassy Eyes and RA | Arthritis Information

It happened again. Someone told me I look tired. It wouldn't be so bad, except I wasn't tired at the time. After taking a good look, I realized I often have a slightly glassy and/or moist look to my eyes that may make people think I'm tired. So you think this is just a function of my age (55) or is it something that happens with this illness? Anyone else out there know what I'm talking about and have it too? Any cures? It's bad enough aging and dealing with a chronic disease, I don't want to look old and sick too even on the good days!

OK, I admit it, I'm vain, even at my age. LOL

Jesse, everyone has the right to feel good about how they look. I have glassy eyes most of the time, but that is generally from my pain meds. Are you on any pain meds?

I'm also wondering if it could be related to Sjogren's syndrome, which involves dry eyes (even though your eyes "look moist") and often accompanies RA. Perhaps someone else here could tell you more about it.

Finally, if you're having a lot of pain, I imagine that could make you look tired even if you weren't.

Jesse, Maybe you have dry eye. I didn't even realize i had i until i kept getting what I thought was pink eye. Turns out it was severe dry eye. Maybe you could try some otc eye drops for now and see if that helps. I use a brand called soothe before bed every night. It makes your eyes cloudy for a minute but they are such good drops.

Thanks, Innerglow and Christine. It never occurred to me it might be dry eyes because I have no physical symptoms and even after my lasik eye surgery I had dry eyes only for a few days, which is quite unusual. I rarely take pain meds now that the RA drugs have kicked in and have only minor pain, so that's out I guess. I'm going to try the eye drops, at least for special occasions, and see if that helps. It's no fun being told I look tired...that's never a compliment!

Thanks for your help.

Oh, just tell them you were up all night partying!

Unfortunately there is no real treatment for Sjogren's except hydrating with eye drops.

Cat, you can get tiny plastic plugs put into your tear ducts which help with
the dry eye symptom of sjogen's.What about cyclosporine eyedrops? "Restasis"? Will those help with Sjrogen's?

Definitely try the non-drug approach first... but you might want to talk with the doc at your next visit.

When I had a scratched cornea last year, I used lubricating eyedrops during the day (not just regular saline) and mineral oil eye ointment at night for a month or so to keep everything moist so that I didn't keep ripping open the scratch as it was healing. It helped immensely.

I have plugs, use restasis and lubricating drops. The restasis is miserable for the first couple of months but then it really kicks in. I went from using lubricating drops every hour including all night long - (just lovely for sleeping) to just using them now a few times a day. Its ironic but dry eye does make your eyes water and can give you a glassy look but for me, it was always painful, itchy, stinging, blurry with floaters etc. I have uveitis as well but my ophathmologist says that there is a lot of overlap in the symptoms.

good luck