Why is my eye watering?

There are two very common reasons for eye watering. Interestingly, we don’t commonly think of eye watering as being a result of overproduction of tears. One cause of eye watering is blockage of the drainage of tears. If there is a block of the drain of tears, the surface of the eye will accumulate lots of fluid. Normally, tears drain through tiny holes in the eyelids and then through a duct into the nose. (This is why crying often results in a stuffy nose.) The obstruction in that pathway is often at the level of the duct. While this does happen, a more common reason for eye watering is dry eye. “WHAT?!?” Yes, a dry eye surface often causes reflex tearing. People often find this difficult to understand because a dry eye seems incompatible with a wet eye. However, if the surface is dry, the reflex tears that are produced often don’t have the same lubricating ability that a normal tear surface would. Reflex tears are better than nothing, but normal tears are much better and even artificial tears are usually better. That is why treating a dry eye, often with artificial tears, can actually lead to less eye watering. So the treatment for a wet eye may actually involve wetting it more, which is certainly a tough concept.