UKH

I'm experiencing some eye troubles.  Recurrent cysts on the rims/inside of my eye-lids.  I've got a strong suspicion this is a result of a getting my eyes sand-blasted by dirt and pollen on my commute into work.  There are several hills where I think I must hit c. 30 miles an hour or close for periods of time.  Went to the doc who prescribed the eye drops you get if you have conjunctivitis which seems to stop it getting bad but has not prevented it happening.

Does anyone have any similar experiences? 

I wear glasses but they have large gaps around the edge of the frame where shit still gets in.  Can anyone give me any recommendations for prescription cycling glasses that give very good protection from wind/associated crud?

Having cured my athletes foot (vinegar baths) I know you folks have the answers : )

I have a pair which rejoice in the moniker Basto Norville. My local optician ordered them in for me with a distance prescription at a cost of something like £140. They come with a variety of clip on wrap around lenses for different light conditions. The only downside for me is I also need to carry a pair of more general purpose glasses so I can read the cake menu in the cafe ....

So the vinegar did work?

Yup - so far so good!  I couldn't remember who it was as the thread was in the pub else I would have written to thank them, so if it was you thank you!  Knew those Romans knew a thing or two : )

The days I cycle in and when I cycle for fun at the weekend I wear contacts and then 'sports' (i.e. semi wrap around style) sunglasses. Can you use contacts? I find I don't have the problem of looking under them and it being fuzzy as happens with my glasses when I'm cycling or climbing.

You can get some many cheap to relatively cheap sunglasses that a year's supply of contacts plus some sunglasses, is probably cheaper than getting prescription sports glasses I would have thought.

Re. sunnies - I have some photo-chromatic cycling ones we I use a lot - but for winter and night I have various pairs of clear basic ones (I find some safety ones for drilling and the like work fine, but Decathlon do clear cycling ones for a few quid).  I also like the 4 quid cycling sunglasses from Aldi! 

And do your feet smell permanently of vinegar?!

Maybe bathe your eyes in vinegar 

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please don’t!😀

You can get prescription Oakleys, but they're not cheap.  If you have your prescription, you can also go to https://www.optilabs.com/ who generally get good reviews.  Or get some contact lenses (perhaps not ideal given the problem) and some Bolle Contour safety glasses (clear or smoked <£10 on many ebay sites) which are my winter/bad weather commuting standard

No, the smell disappears pretty quickly.  It is very effective and cheap in my experience.  Vinegar has been an essential self help ingredient probably since civilisation began until the modern chemical industry made available more expensive and not always so effective treatments.

If you add some hot water to the vinegar the footbath becomes quite pleasant.  Add sea salt and you have an aroma of salt and vinegar crisps

I still dissolve boric (used to be called "boracic") acid crystals to make eye drops - had this from my mother who used it to treat conjunctivitis when we were kids.  So bad that our eyes were so stuck together with matter in the morning we had to walk blind to the bathroom.  Her treatment cleared it up pretty well without any doctor visits

Come to think of it it would be quite easy to carry some for camping (cleansing of cuts etc), but going abroad with a little bag of white powder crystals could prove troublesome

The Bolle safety glasses  can be ordered with prescription lenses too. The nice thing about safety glasses is that because it is often employers paying for them, they don’t jack the price up for a designer name.

I've been looking for some good cycling classes as the bugs have been getting pretty bad on my favourite routes. Thanks for the tip! Order placed.

I got some of the Bolle safety glasses that nniff recommended a couple of years ago and they look very smart. Unfortunately the frames broke on mine pretty quickly - it might have just been really bad luck that they got crushed by someone putting something heavy on them (I suspect one of my kids might have done it by accident - and either didn't realise or was too scared to fess up!). I had a pair of Bolle sunglasses of a not dissimilar design for over 20 years now and they've been bashed about, squashed into bags, even jumped onto once when bouldering! And they are still fine except a few scratches. So I did wonder if the safety specs are made of much less strong plastic being a lot cheaper?

You can get some safety glasses called spoggles a cross between goggles and glasses not as ridiculous looking as they sound

Maybe go to the optician - they're often better than the GP for eyes. Sounds like you could have blepharitis (https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/blepharitis (https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/blepharitis/)

I've developed it over the last few years, along with dry eyes. I kind of think it might be related to lots of days out in the wind, cycling and climbing chalk. But, it might also be genetic, as my brother and sister also have it...!

I reckon you've been unlucky - I've not broken a pair yet and take no care of them whatsoever - maybe a bit of RainX in the winter to keep the water beading and that's it.  When they get too scratched up they become strimmer glasses.  I suppose i'm on pair 3 of clear ones in 7 or so years.  Smoked ones don't get used much since I decided my f-off gold lens Oakleys made people less likely to pull out on me commuting into London.  All I need to do now is fit a laser to the Oakleys to zap those who still pull out.

As ever thanks for the help all, will digest further when I am not at work.  

Two things for now - I reuse the vinegar for the footbath and you get some weird stuff forming in it, what's that about?

An image - I rode to work in my swimming goggles this morning, got some funny looks, especially when I had to pop them on the tip of my nose to defog them from time to time!  Eyes felt much better on arrival at work than they normally do though.

Do you have full mudguards on your bike?  Not a complete cure for your problem I know, but I notice a huge reduction in crud on/in my face when using them.

There are plenty of manufacturers of sports eyewear but the glasses are expensive and an optician will strugge to glaze a heavily curved frame if you have a strong presecription. A cheap option is to go to TK Max, buy some sunnies, pop the lenses out and get them glazed to your prescription. 

I bit the bullet and got my optician to make me some cycling glasses from Shopic (difficult to find online) glazed with my varifocal presecription and photochrmic, they were expensive but the vision is superb in sunshine or darkness. With my frame the lenses are held in separate sub-frames that are clipped into the curved main frame, meaning they can work even with a strong prescription.

My prescription is too strong for wraparound sports sunglasses, so my optician suggested safety glasses instead. I had a pair made up and although  they are fugly they work brilliantly keeping the wind, dust, flies etc out of the only pair of eyes I'll ever have.

Have you tried doing something called "lid hygiene"? As you mention, the antibiotic drops might clear it up somewhat but won't prevent it. 

Basically it involves cleaning along your eyelid margins twice a day, either using a cotton bud with a solution of baby shampoo in some cool boiled water, or some proprietary wipes. 

Are you sure they're not just chalazions?

How expensive is expensive, if you don’t mind me asking?

I use a pair of I826 glasses, came with three sets of outer lenses, mirrored, orange and clear and a slot-in prescription inner.

https://www.sportseyeweardirect.co.uk/I826-Glasses-to-Prescription-

Mark

It definitely sounds like you have blepharitis.

It can take some time and effort to resolve and there isn't a straightforward cure.

I have been referred to an eye specialist at my local hospital and it's slowly improving but I've been treated inby the past by having cysts cut and drained, and have had steroidal eye drops to clear up the red eyes.

I would go back to your gp quickly if symptoms don't improve and I would be vigilant in cleaning and heat treatment, there is lots of info on line. 

Thanks, gone for these, they look just the ticket.

The swimming goggle experiment was partially successful - my eyes felt tremendous by the end of the day, not sand-papered, dry and painful.  However I did have to faff around with the goggles a lot to stop them fogging which was vexing.

They were about £240 if I recall but I've had about six years of good use out of them so far. The soft rubber ends of the arms are beginning to perish now with sweat.

That’s not too bad at all - I’m paying £40-odd three or so times a year for contact lenses, plus the £100 on my sunglasses.