Dry eyes when cooking holiday dinner

A holiday cooking day dries and irritates eyes in several ways at once: blasts of hot, dry air every time the oven opens, smoke from roasting and searing, fumes from chopped onions, and hours in a warm, crowded kitchen. Stand to the side of the oven door, run the range hood, wash your hands before touching your eyes, and keep eye drops well away from the stove.

Can cooking cause dry eyes?

Cooking doesn’t change your eyes, but it changes the air right in front of them. Opening a 350°F oven to baste a turkey sends a wave of very hot, very dry air straight up to face height. Heat speeds evaporation, so the thin film of tears on your eyes thins out faster for a few moments every time. Do that every 30 minutes across a six-hour roast and you can end the afternoon with eyes that feel gritty and tired.

A holiday kitchen also tends to run hot for hours with the house heating on, the oven on, several burners going and a dozen people breathing in the same few rooms. Warm air holds more moisture, but in winter the air started out dry, and the kitchen often doesn’t feel humid until the pasta water comes to a boil.

Dry heat vs. steam

Not all kitchen heat is the same for your eyes.

• Oven and broiler heat is dry. It feels like a hair dryer to the face and pulls moisture off your eyes.
• Steam from pots and kettles is moist, but it’s also hot, and a face full of steam when you lift a lid can sting. Tilt lids away from you.
• Searing, roasting and frying put smoke and fine droplets of oil into the air, which irritate the eye’s surface even when the air isn’t dry.

Habits that help on a big cooking day

• Step to the side and look away for a second when you open the oven, letting the first rush of heat pass.
• Turn the range hood on before you start searing, not after the kitchen is already smoky.
• Crack a window if the weather allows, or open a door to another room so air can move.
• Take short breaks out of the kitchen; a few minutes in a cooler room lets your eyes recover.
• Blink deliberately while you’re focused on knife work or reading a recipe on your phone, both of which lower your blink rate.
• Drink water through the day; cooks often forget to.

Why onions make your eyes sting

Cutting an onion breaks open its cells and releases an irritant into the air that reaches your eyes within seconds. Your eyes respond the way they do to any irritant: stinging, then tears. That’s a reflex, not dryness, and lubricating drops aren’t labeled for it. Quell’s label lists its Uses as For use as a protectant against further irritation or to relieve dryness of the eye, which doesn’t include onion sting.

What does help with onions is ordinary kitchen practice: a sharp knife that cuts cleanly instead of crushing, chilling the onion for a while before you cut it, cutting near the range hood with the fan on, and keeping your face back from the board. The sting fades on its own within a few minutes once you step away.

Washing your hands before eye drops

Cooking puts everything on your fingers: raw poultry, hot peppers, garlic, butter, onion juice. Touching your eyes, or the bottle, with any of that on your hands is a bad idea. Hot pepper oil in particular can burn for a long time and is hard to rinse off skin.

• Wash your hands with soap and water, not just a rinse, before touching your eyes or the bottle.
• Dry them on a clean towel, not the one you’ve been wiping the counters with.
• Follow the label: Do not touch tip of bottle to any surface to avoid contamination. A kitchen counter is exactly the kind of surface it means.
• Put drops in somewhere away from the cooking, like the bathroom, then go back to work.

How to use eye drops as directed walks through the steps if you want a refresher.

Keep the bottle away from the stove

Quell’s label says Store between 15° to 30°C (59° to 86°F). The area near a range or on top of a fridge can run warmer than the rest of the room, and the shelf above a stove gets hotter still. A bottle left on the counter beside the oven all afternoon may go above that range without you noticing. Keep it in your bag, in a bedroom or in a bathroom drawer while you cook. The same goes for the dining table if candles are lit nearby; fireplaces, candles and dry eyes covers that side of the evening.

When a drop fits the day

Quell is designed to reinforce the tear film’s oil layer to help reduce moisture loss. If your eyes feel dry after a long cooking session, wash your hands, step out of the kitchen and follow the directions: Apply 1 drop 3 times per day in each eye. Read the Drug Facts first if you haven’t, including the caution about egg or bird allergies.

Don’t use drops to rinse out something that splashed into your eye, such as hot oil, a cleaning product or pepper juice. Flush the eye with clean, lukewarm water and get medical help if pain or blurriness continues. And if a spatter burns your eye, that’s a job for a doctor, not for a lubricating drop. 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.

Planning ahead for the holidays

If you know you’ll be cooking for a crowd, check that you have a bottle before the week of the meal. Quell ships from Brentwood, Tennessee, for $10.00, or free with 3 bottles, and no delivery date is promised, so order early in the season. Ordering eye drops early for the holidays has more on timing.