As you enter mid age many women do not realize that along with hot flashes and night sweats, dry eyes are most common during or after menopause, when levels of the hormones estrogen and prolactin drops, says William Frey II, Ph.D. researcher director at the Dry Eye and Tear Research Center at the Regions Medical Center in St. Paul Minnesota.

Not all dry eyes are related to hormonal changes as was stated in the introduction. If you live in a dry and windy climate or work in a building that isn't well-ventilated, you are likely to suffer from dry eyes, says Eleanor Faye, M.D. an ophthalmic surgeon at the Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital in New York. Allergies and meds such as diuretics, antihistamines, decongestants and blood pressure medications can also dry your eyes out.

Eyes tend to be driest during early morning when you wake up, particularly if you sleep in a dry bedroom, or at 5 to 6 pm, after you have worked in front of a computer screen all day. Spending time in a dry environment like an air-conditioned car or airplane can also exacerbate dry-eye symptoms, says Anne Sumers, M.D. an ophthalmologist in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and a spoken for the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

If you have dry eyes, you will know it. Dry eyes itch and burn and can feel gravelly and irritated. Crying makes the problem worse. Emotional tears actually wash away the oils in the tear film. Without these oils, your eyes can rub against yrou eyelids, causing aggravation and dryness, says Eric, Donnenfeld, M.D., program director of the corneao department and associate professor of ophthalmology at North Shore University/Cornell and co-chairman of the external diseases and corena department at the Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital in New York.

For Instant Moisture

If your eyes feel like dried-up cornflakes, relief is moments away. To soothe your dehydrated orbs, try these strategies. Apply preservative-free artificial tears, which can be purchased in drugstores and supermarkets. A few drops should solve the problme right away, says Dr. Sumers. It is especially helpful for contact lens wearers to use artificial tears for dry eyes. Contact lenses act like sponges, absorbing all the available tear film, says Dr. DOnnenfelf.

As an alternative, wet a towel or a washcloth with warm water and place the warm cloth against your eyes for a few moments. Make sure that the water isn't hot enough to burn you. Leave the compress on just long enough to heat up the oil in your eyelids so that they moisten your eyes effectively, says Dr. DOnnenfeld. Repeat twice a day.

A Herbal Prescription for Dry Eyes

Chamomile tea soothes the eyes, says Eleanor Faye, M.D., an ophthalmic surgeon at the Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital in New York. To make the tea, steep one cup boiled water, then strain it to remove the herbs. Keep the tea refrigerated until you need to use it. When your eyes are dry and burning, soak cotton squares in cold tea. Apply the compresses to your closed eyes for 10 minutes at a time, as often as needed.

For Continued Comfort---prescriptions

You can permanently put an end to desert-dry eyes. These tips will tell you how. Using a cotton swab, apply a pinhead-size drop of petroleum jelly to your lids along the edge of your lashes every night before bed. Tear production decreases at night, and petroleum jelly helps the tears that you do produce from evaporating quickly, Dr. Faye says. Try not to get the jelly into your eyes, or you may have a brief bout of blurry vision. (If you do get some in your eyes, rinse a soft washcloth in warm water and swipe it over your closed eye to wipe it clean).

For a severe case of dry eyes, use a eyedropper to place a drop of corn oil in each eye before you go to sleep, says Dr. Faye. If you are going to use this remedy, be sure to keep a separate container of corn oil in your medicine cabinet. Corn oil from the pantry is likely to be contaminated, she cautions.

Drizzle some olive oil on your salads. Dry eyes often stem from a deficiency in essential fatty acids, an incrasing problem in this era of low fat diets, says Dr. Faye. Olive oil is a good way of preventing a deficiency without loading up on saturated forms of fat.

Take 500 mg of evening primrose oil in capsule form three times a day until your eyes feel less irritated, says Deirdre O'Connor, N.D., a naturopathic physician in private practice in Mystic, Connecticut. Like olive oil, evening primrose can help raise your level of essential fatty acids. Evening primrose oil may be purchased in health good stores.

Be sure that you are getting 5,000 international units of vitamin A and 15 milligrams of zinc each day. Deficiencies of vitamin A and zinc can cause dry eyes, says dr. Faye.

Take one capsule of cod-liver daily. The essential fatty acid in cod-liver oil keep the oil glands in your eyelids from clogging up and drying out your eyes, says Dr. Donnenfelf. Cod-liver oil does contain hefty amounts of vitamin A, however. So cod-liver oil capsules are replacements for, not additions to, the vitamin A supplement recommended by Dr. Faye.

Prescription to Prevent Dryness

Aside from keeping your eyes and lids well-oiled, dont forget these tried-and-true prescription for keeping your eyes from getting dry.

If you wear contact lenses, change to glasses when you get home from work, says Dr. Farber. If you're pregnant or going through menopause and have relentlessly dry eyes, you may want to switch to glasses entirely, he says.

When you go outside on a dry, windy day, wear wraparound sunglasses to prevent the wind from blowing against your eyes and drying out your tear film, says Dr. Donnenfeld. You may want to consider wearing ski goggles, even if you dont ski.

When riding in your car, turn the air vents toward your feet, not your face.

At home, don't sit under or in the direct line of heating or A/C units and/or vetns says Dr. Donnenfeld.

In the cold of winter, run a humidifier in any room where you spend a lot of time. A humidifier keeps the air moist, so it doesn't dry out the eyes.

If you smoke, stop. Smoking aggravates dry-eye symptoms of burning and tearing. It also increases your risk of macular degeneration, a condition in which the cells in the macula (the central portion of the retina) break down. Left unchecked, macular degeneration can eventually lead to blindness, says Dr. Sumers.