The glands at the base of your eyelashes also help lubricate your eyes when you blink. Occasionally, an eyelash may fall into the eye and get stuck for a minute or two. Most of the time, when you feel an eyelash in your eye, it moves around the surface of the eyeball like an ice cube on a tile floor. It can also move below the upper or lower eyelids.
Your body will naturally remove objects from your eyes by blinking and creating more tears. If your child has an eyelash stuck in the eye, don't use your fingernails or any other sharp object to try to pick it up. This causes a reflex tear that brings the eyelash to the lacus acrimalis and, therefore, puts it in close contact with the tear points. If you feel like you have an eyelash in your eye but can't find it, there may be something else at play.
If you have an eyelash stuck in your child's eye or eye for more than an hour, you may need to call a medical professional for help. If an eyelash has been floating in your eye for about a minute or so, it can start to drive you a little crazy. Eyelashes lost during the normal growth cycle, as well as those that have been plucked, will grow back. You should not rub your eye, as eyelashes can cause a corneal abrasion, which will take several days to heal.
You can identify that what is in your eye is an eyelash by standing in front of a mirror, keeping your eye open, and moving your eye from side to side. Don't panic, there are several things you can try to quickly remove an unruly eyelash from your eye. In some situations, you may need the help of an ophthalmologist or optometrist to safely remove the eyelash. Repeated attempts to remove an eyelash from an eye can scratch and irritate the cornea, increasing the risk of eye infections.
If you often feel an eyelash or other object under your eyelid, you may have a dry eye or an eyelid swelling. Eye diseases like this cause too many eyelashes to grow in the tiny fat-producing glands in the eyelids. You can also injure your eyelid or cornea when you try to remove the eyelash with your fingernails or a sharp object. Double eyelashes are a medical condition that means that a genetic mutation caused additional eyelashes to grow along the eyelid.
If your eyelashes fall out frequently, you may experience hair loss or an eyelid infection.
