Regular washing of hands has been high on the agenda during Covid times, and for good reason!  Our hands pick up all sorts of things all day long, and if we then rub our eyes with those same hands we risk transferring bacteria to our eyes and causing infection. 

Read on to see what our national office team has to say about this and why you should stop rubbing your eyes.

Excessive eye rubbing can be highly dangerous in any given situation. Think about this, we wouldn’t be rubbing our eyes up against a keyboard but that’s basically what we’re doing when we touch our eyes without washing our hands.

We use our hands to do just about everything, from picking up and scanning our phone, using a keyboard, preparing and eating food, touching our hair, going to the bathroom, emptying the bins, and, well, most things we do in a day.

At any one time there are hundreds of thousands of tiny bacteria, and potentially viruses, living on our skin.

Then, our eyes get itchy, and before washing our hands, we instinctively take the same hand that we were using on the keyboard, up to our eyes and we rub them, without thinking about what we’ve just used our hands for.

Temporary relief after eye rubbing

We experience temporary relief when we rub our eyes because we stimulate our lacrimal glands which produce tears that lubricate and soothe the eyes resulting in them not feeling irritated.

By bringing our fingers up to our face we also transfer bacteria living on the hands like pseudomonas and staphylococcus which can increase the risk of eye infections.

Most of us have experienced itchy eyes. When we rub them, we get temporary relief, but it can actually make the itching worse and end up damaging the eyes.

Eye damage caused by excessive eye rubbing

If we rub our eyes too hard, we can break the tiny blood vessels around the eyes which causes those dark unwanted circles that we try to get rid of with homemade remedies or makeup.

If they keep feeling itchy, and we keep putting pressure on our eyes with our fingers, they will feel even more irritated, which can result in redness and puffiness.

After the temporary relief, they may feel even itchier and more irritated than before. Rubbing the eyes continually can also cause some people thinning of the cornea.

Excessive eye rubbing, whether due to chronic dryness, itchiness, or merely habit, should be addressed to avoid unpleasant consequences.