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Subscribe to RSSSome of the evidence of a night's sleep are visible when you lift your head off the pillow -- bed head, morning breath, dried-up drool, and eye boogers.
And while the cause of most of these sleep remnants is fairly obvious, the reason behind those sometimes-sticky, sometimes-crusty gobs of crud that can dot the lashes or cling to the corners of the eye is less clear. Why do our peepers churn out this gunk at night and what's in the stuff? For answers to these important questions, Body Odd turned to an eye expert.
"The general consensus is that this debris is the stuff leftover from dried out tears," says Dr. Sherleen Chen, director of the cataract and comprehensive ophthalmology service at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston.
Tears are made up of water, protein, oils, and a mucous layer known as mucin, which typically coat the surface of the eye to moisten and protect it from viruses and bacteria.
But when your eyes are closed and your eyelids are not blinking, dirt and debris within the eye isn't continually washed over by tears, which would help to dilute them. So at night, dryness causes the stuff in tears to precipitate out, explains Chen. Then the crud collects toward the inside corner of the eye, where tears usually end up.
Eye boogers can also accumulate on the outer corners of the eye or anywhere along the lash.
Throughout her years of medical training and specializing in ophthalmology, Chen says she's yet to come across a technical term for "eye boogers," so she simply refers to it as "mattering." But in everyday conversation, it may go by the name "sleepy sand," "eye goop," "sleep," or "sleep dust."
There's also the question of its consistency -- sometimes "eye boogers" are wet and sticky and other times they're dry and sandy. Does this depend on how long they've sat there or how much sleep you've gotten?
Chen says the texture is a function of a person's tear film. The crud is crumbly in people whose eyes tend to be dry -- their peepers have more solids and not enough liquid.
Folks who have more allergies, tend to have more mucous, which gives eye crud a wetter, gunkier quality to it.
People who wear contacts are prone to forming more "sleepy sand" because the lenses
irritate the surface of the eye, so it produces more mucous to protect itself. People who have allergies affecting their eyes or who rub them a lot, such as small children, may also have more eye crud.
If the indoor air is dry, you may also wake up with more "sleep dust." Although not an attractive look first thing in the morning, the stuff is basically harmless.
Chen says the best way to clear eye boogers is to lay a hot washcloth on the lid and lashes for a minute or two, then gently clean them off.
What do you call "eye boogers?" Ever had a particularly bad case of 'em?
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Eyes Krispies.
When I was very young, I woke with so much that my eyelashes were glued together. I thought I was blind. Then mom used a wet washcloth and I was cured. Oh happy day. Such is the thinking of a three year old.
Don't worry - I still do that as an adult.
Sleegers
Ocular Snot
Every morning, the first thing I do is head for the lavatory and a warm wash cloth, always there just for that purpose. An allergy suffer in perpetual air conditioning, I frequently awake with the crusties. Eyse wide shut.
Sleepies
I call it "sleep crust" nowadays. But I was raised in an American-Chinese home, and the literal translation from Chinese to English is "eye poop."
Our household calls it "eye snot"
Sleepy bugs.
Two minutes with a hot cloth? I just scrub them out with my fingers while I'm washing my face. . .
You ain't had a good case of eye boogers until you've had pink eye! It's like the opthalmologic equivalent of a very bad runny nose.
I can back you up on that, hahaha. I got a secondary infection from a pretty severe flu that eventually led to me having pink eye in both eyes. I'll never forget waking up with both eyes sealed completely shut. I was so sick and exhausted an confused that I probably would have started crying if there was anywhere for the tears to go, hahah. Learned to fall asleep with a damp washcloth covering my eyes until the pink eye cleared up after that one.
They've been called eye boogers in my family since I was a kid...
That's nothing compared to the crust you get when you have pink eye. Sometimes it's so bad that in the process of removing it, you lose multiple eyelashes.
Warning: this story is gross.
One time I threw up from a migraine so badly that I splashed stomach contents into my eyes.
I got an eye infection so bad, my eyes were running snot like a nose.
I ended up at the ER for something completely unrelated (and a true emergency), but all the nurses and doctors did was go "OMG! What happened to your eye!" and "We'll put your leg back together, but we have to do something about that eye!".
And then, of course, since it was a teaching hospital, I got to be visited by every med student in the place as a perfect example of a disgusting eye infection. LOL
enzenboogers
Sleepy bugs
Cripes, what a dumb article.
Yes, thank heavens it wasn't about p---y boogers.
eye crud or eye goop. Or we'd just say, "you have **** in the corner of your eyes."
You do realize this is under "Body Odd"? What did you expect?
It's called "yellow matter custard" in "I am the Walrus".
goo, goo, g'joob!
I've always called 'em either Eye Goo, or Eye Boogers
We call 'em eye boogies.
Sleepy dirt!
My dog loves to eat her eye boogers. She can't reach them with her tongue, so I remove them (they're crusty) in the morning, and feed them to her-- yum. If dogs had "toe jam", she'd eat that, as well.
greeks call them tzibles pronounced tsee-bless....doesn't sound as nasty as eye snot yuck
Oh I cannot believe this...first, there was spongebob, now it's "eye boogers".....THERE ARE PEOPLE DYING IN THIS WORLD! PEOPLE ARE BEING RAPED, MURDERD, MASSACRED! PEOPLES' LIVES ARE BEING DESTROYED FROM NATURAL DISASTERS! Everyday heroes are NOT getting the honor they deserve from the news, because people decided to make something as MINISCULE as "eye boogers" into a news story!
This @!$%# is driving me up the @!$%#ing wall!
THIS
IS
NOT
NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOBODY CARES ABOUT "EYE BOOGERS"...ugh.
Well then... Ms. Isis... I suggest you unplug. Turn off your computer and go out and do something worthwhile with your life. Maybe help out at the local soup kitchen or homeless shelter, rather than rant on and on about something "Nobody cares about".
P!$$ 0FF!
....but I care about them.
Yellow matter custard.
Actually, Isis, this page isn't intended to be the news.
It is part of a blog about weird body conditions.
It rarely contains any earth-shattering revelations about society.
But, it is educational and fun.
If you don't want to have fun and/or be educated in the process, then don't click on any of the Body Odd blog posts.
Or, as Calvin says, get off the computer now and then. The key is moderation.
So people aren't allowed to be interested in something that's not so depressing? If all I read about was murder and rape, I'd probably have to go kill myself.
Yeah.
What I found funny was at the time of her comment, the main news story with the big picture on MSNBC's homepage was a fashion story about college football uniforms.
personally i'd rather read about crusty eyes than rape and murders but to each his own LOL
Who is this "nobody" of whom you speak? I care--am I therefore "nobody"--okay.
I'm nobody--are you nobody, too? That's two of us!
I think it's a fun little article about something I have been curious about--it's just a bit of trivia that is fun to read. I don't mind indulging my curiosity now and then.
Well, but my question is, if it's the eyes that make booger, how do they end up in the nose?
You do realize that your sinuses are all connected, don't you?
Haven't you ever seen someone squirt milk out of their "eye"?
Your nose makes its own mucus, and thus its own boogers.
Other parts of your body also make mucus, such as your ears, your stomach, and men's glans penis - these are a few of your body's mucous membranes.
No word on whether the penis mucus forms boogers or not. As a booger is simply dried mucus that forms around dust/dirt particles (which is basically a cloud), I am guessing the answer is yes, at least for uncircumcised men.
"winkers"
Yes! We always called them sleepywinks.
Mine tend to be pebble like, so I call them "eye boulders"!