Have you ever wanted to change the color of your eyes? Many of my patients are interested in changing their eye color, and I typically use colored contacts for that purpose. But is there a way to change the color permanently? Today we’re going to investigate eye color changing drops and balms. Do they work? Are they safe? And we’ll discuss what you may want to consider before using these eye color changing products.
The theme of eye school is lifelong eye-ducation so I always invite you to let me know what you’re learning and request videos about new topics! Alright eye school pupils, let’s take a look at today’s topic: Color Changing Eye Drops!
What are the current options to change your eye color?
First of all, what are the current options to change your eye color? Well we know that colored contact lenses are a doctor approved very common way to change your eye color and there are many options on the market. I myself prescribe air optix aqua colors, daily colors and others are out there as well. There's certainly a plethora of online colored contact lens stores that we've talked about in the past as well.
The second way to change your eye color is iris implant surgery. I do have a video planned on this topic so i'm not going to go into that in depth in this blog.
The third way of changing your eye color are actual eye color changing drops and these drops are being marketed by many many different companies. In researching this video I found drops from a company called Wonder drops and Icolor balm that was promoted recently by Scott Disick. Other drops being marketed include Crystaldrops.co, Lighteyez, Iris Illume and many of these sellers seem to come and go.
Most have their seller pages removed on amazon and poor reviews, including reviews that say their balm came expired. Also, many have copious grammatical errors on their websites. If they’re using the same verification and research process for the safety of their drops that they use on their own marketing websites, that’s not a good sign!
My Biggest Concerns
The active ingredient used can be very very difficult to find the actual active ingredient within these different drops and balms In some cases, they’re using n-acetyl-glucosamine; a skin lightener. It is marketed as cosmetics, and has not undergone stringent FDA requirements expected of prescription eye drops. In order for a prescription eye drop to hit the market there are often three phases of FDA trials and you have to hit certain criteria of study subjects and prove that those drops are safe.
It's super concerning to me that these are being marketed as cosmetics and that they're using a skin lightening ingredient in an eye drop with no safety studies and no safety data that I could find in the literature; anywhere!
The data and content on these companies’ websites is very misleading! On the website crystaldrops.com the very first image you see going onto the website is three female doctors in white coats and I just take issue with the message that it's sending. It's almost like it's saying that that drop is doctor approved or that it's something you could get from your doctor when that's just not the case at all and again there's no verbiage anywhere on the website saying that doctors approve of these drops. I feel like showing doctors on the very front page first image is problematic.
In fact, we insert a little clip in our video above in which we have an ophthalmologist and other medical doctors and physicians talking about these drops and some of the problems they see with them. Though these drops are on the
market, the safety trials are yet to be done. Because these "cosmetic" drops are not considered a medication and they don't have the same stringent restrictions that a company would have to go through to prove safety, if these were on the market as a true medical product the company would have to truly prove safety but this is not. Unfortunately it is being touted as a cosmetic.
By the way, when you look at the websites; the comments are astounding! There are these people sort of egging each other on for prolonged use, to keep at it and to get this sustained result, so just more and more damage! I suspect it's for buzz!
Should you use these types of drops to change your eye color?
As an eye doctor I feel it's important to raise some very important questions. These drops say that they work on the front surface or they can make it through the front surface of the eye and change the eye color. that's impacting the melanin and the pigment within the iris of the eye; but who's to say that it won't make it further back into the eye?
What if this drop makes it to the retina itself? There is pigment in the back of the eye as well and we know that in certain conditions, like albinism: people that have very little pigment in the back of their eyes, that actually is a problem for them. they don't have as great a visual acuity there's other issues in albinism and so i don't know if this will affect
the back of the eye but that concern, for me, is definitely there.
I'm a dry eye specialist, so I have to question how these drops might impact the ocular surface and the meibomian glands in dry eye patients. We know already that they're not FDA approved and they're not studied stringently in the way that prescription eye drops should be. so even me as a doctor, doesn't know what the ingredients are necessarily! My concern would be that those ingredients could have a negative impact on the ocular surface environment which would impact the dry eye and create more dry eye, hypersensitivity reactions, allergies and things like that. When you see some of amazon reviews you will be able to read for yourself that most of these reviews are one star and really are not positive. These people are talking about expired bombs and not having good results and even saying things like this is a scam.
In terms of research there are no peer-reviewed studies that I was able to find. One of the sites does claim FDA approval but I am unable in lots of searches to find that documentation anywhere from the fda. In conclusion, I cannot endorse use of these medications, I honestly in some cases, don't even understand how they're allowed to operate and definitely safety studies are needed. There are safer ways to change your eye color and the best one of those is to get fit and colored contact lenses, which is what I would recommend you do if you're interested in changing your eye color.
That’s it for today’s lesson! I hope you enjoyed it and learned something. Remember, learning if lifelong
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