Whenever you wake up, you feel incredibly unfresh and that goes beyond waking up to the foul taste of morning breath. You have to remember that when you are sleeping, your body is cleaning out toxins and repairing cells and tissues. But that also means that unpleasant microbes are building due to inactivity which is responsible for morning breath, and you also wake up to crust in your eyes.
That crust in your eyes as you wake up is quite unpleasant as it causes your eyelashes to glue together and opening your eyes and blinking takes some effort to do. And even once it is gone, for the most part, you may find yourself rubbing your eyes during the day and finding that there is some of that crust leftover. That is when you will wonder if it is normal to wake up to crust in your eyes and if this can be suggestive of some problem. As icky as the crust, which is known as sleep happens to be in your eyes, it does serve a purpose just like everything else! Let’s talk more about that.
What Is That Cause For Sleep In Your Eyes?
You have to remember that your eyes are always producing tears as well as mucus in order to moisten and to protect your eyes. And the purpose of involuntary blinking is to flush out the excess tears and water, and any dirt that comes into contact with your eyes. However, when you are sleeping you cannot blink and at the same time, your eyes are making tears and mucus anyway. That creates an overload of those components and you are unable to flush them out because you are unable to blink when you sleep.
Therefore, the tears and mucus will settle at the corners of your eyes and in your eyelashes. Not only have your eyes produced those tears and mucus but they were shedding dead cells as you shed dead cells the most when you do sleep. As unpleasant as it is, sleep in your eyes is very normal and it would be concerning if you did not end up with sleep in your eyes each morning.
Therefore, the crust is whitish-yellow and you do have some white discharge as you wake up which is the sleep in your eyes. However, the amounts of sleep should be small. If there are copious amounts of it, then that is a reason to be concerned.
If your eyes are excessively tearing or producing a lot of discharge, then that can be a sign of an infection or it could be simply allergies. You could even potentially have a drainage problem. However, if you are experiencing these symptoms of excess tearing and discharge, then you have to see the optometrist.
If you are experiencing excessive crusting around the eyes as well, then that could be a sign of blepharitis which is the inflammation of the eyelids. When your eyelids are inflamed, then you will end up shedding a lot of sleep and that is the time when it would be very hard to open your eyes due to excessive crusting. Especially if the crust is yellow to green in color, then you likely have the infection. Eye drops with antibiotics in it will treat the condition. However, this infection usually results from poor eyelid hygiene.
Other symptoms of blepharitis are sensitivity to light, eye pain, blurry vision, fever, or redness and swelling in the eyelids. You may now be wondering how to keep your eyelid hygiene up to par. You could also have another contagious eye infection known as conjunctivitis or pink eye that has the same symptoms.
How Do You Keep Eyelid Hygiene Clean?
If you wipe the crust with your fingers, then that is not a good idea since everyone does that. Your fingers are full of oils and microbes that can easily infect your eyes and eyelids. The best thing to do is to wipe the sleep away from your eyes by using a clean washcloth with warm water to loosen the sleep and then to wipe it.
It is also critical to clean your makeup thoroughly the night before with cleansers that remove eye makeup and do not make a habit of touching your eyes and face during the day.
Now you know that sleep is normal in your eyes, but if you are experiencing an excess of it each morning, then you will want to see the doctor as you could have an infection.
