Dry eyes from lack of sleep

When you sleep less, you spend more hours with your eyes open, and every waking hour lets the tear film evaporate, especially in front of a screen or in dry indoor air. Tired eyes also tend to feel heavy and gritty. Lubricating drops can relieve dryness within the label’s directions, but if poor sleep is ongoing, talk to a doctor.

More waking hours, more time drying out

While your eyes are closed, they aren’t exposed to the air in the room. Cut a night from eight hours to five, and you’ve added three hours to the day in which the tear film is working against evaporation. Those extra hours usually aren’t spent outdoors in fresh air, either: they’re late evenings on a phone, a laptop or a TV, all of which slow blinking.

Where the extra hours go

• Scrolling in bed after the lights are out, with a bright screen close to your face.
• A late night of work or study at a desk under a heating vent.
• Long drives, late flights and early starts, often with car or cabin air blowing on you.
• Night feeds and wake-ups with a new baby, followed by a full day.

None of these is unusual, and each is manageable on its own. When they stack up for a week or two, many people notice their eyes feel drier and more tired than usual.

Why tired eyes feel the way they do

Tired eyes are a common, general complaint: heavy lids, a gritty feeling, the urge to rub them, trouble keeping focus on small text. Rubbing can feel good for a second, but it’s rough on the eyes and moves whatever’s on your fingers onto them, so try to keep your hands away. A cool, clean washcloth over closed eyes for a few minutes is a gentler break.

Small changes on short-sleep days

• Turn screen brightness down in the evening and hold the phone farther away.
• Take short breaks from screens through the day and look into the distance for a few seconds.
• Keep your bedroom air from getting too dry in winter; a humidifier helps some people.
• Point car vents and desk fans away from your face.
• If you can, protect at least one longer night a week.

These aren’t sleep advice, which is a doctor’s territory. They’re ways to take some of the load off your eyes during the hours you are awake.

Shift workers face a version of this every week. Sleeping in daylight, then working through the night under fluorescent lights and in climate-controlled air, stretches the eyes’ open hours in an unusual pattern. If that’s your schedule, tie your three drops to points in your shift rather than to the clock, so the routine stays the same whether you start at 7 a.m. or 7 p.m. A simple eye drop log makes it easier to keep count across odd hours.

Using eye drops on a tired day

Quell’s label lists it For use as a protectant against further irritation or to relieve dryness of the eye, and the directions are Apply 1 drop 3 times per day in each eye. A long day doesn’t change the number. One way to cover a day that starts early and ends late is to spread the three drops farther apart: one in the morning, one mid-afternoon, and one in the evening before the last stretch of screen time. Quell is designed to reinforce the tear film’s oil layer to help reduce moisture loss, which is what slows evaporation over those added hours.

When you’re exhausted it’s easy to get careless. Wash your hands, and keep the label’s instruction in mind: Do not touch tip of bottle to any surface to avoid contamination. Put the cap back on before you set the bottle down, and keep it somewhere you won’t knock it off a nightstand. Store it as the label says: Store between 15° to 30°C (59° to 86°F).

What the label doesn’t cover

Quell’s label doesn’t say anything about using drops right before sleep or while sleeping. If you wake with dry eyes regularly, ask your eye doctor what to do at night rather than improvising. Waking up with dry eyes in winter covers the bedroom side.

When to see a doctor

Ongoing trouble sleeping is something to raise with your primary care doctor, both for its own sake and because it affects so much else. For your eyes, the label sets the line: Stop use and ask a doctor if you feel eye pain or changes in your vision, if irritation or redness continues, or if the condition worsens or persists for 72 hours. Sudden changes in vision or eye pain shouldn’t be put down to a bad night. Eye symptoms that need a doctor lists the warning signs, and the self-check can help you describe what you notice.