Skin Science Society

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I Thought My Dry Eyes And Eczema Were Unrelated. I Was Wrong.

I was treating two separate conditions with two separate products for three years. My dermatologist knew about one. My optician knew about the other. Neither of them ever mentioned they might be related.

By Victoria M - California, USA

January 6, 2026

Every morning started the same way.

Before I opened my eyes fully, I already knew what was waiting.

The gritty, burning dryness that made blinking feel like sandpaper.

I would reach for the eye drops before I reached for my phone.

Then I would check my arms.

New scratch marks most mornings. Sometimes blood on the sheets from scratching in my sleep without knowing it.

Cream on. Long sleeves. Drops in. Start the day.

I had been doing this for almost three years. And I hadgenuinely accepted it as just... my life.

What I did not know was that both problems had the same cause. And that one thing — taken daily — was quietly addressing both of them at once for thousands of people like me.

Two Conditions I Never
Thought To Connect

My optician had given me the dry eye diagnosis about two years in. Systane drops, used as needed.

My dermatologist managed the eczema on my arms and hands with steroid cream. Both conditions were real, both were managed, and both were treated as entirely separate things by entirely separate people.

I kept drops in every bag I owned. On my desk at work. On my bedside table.

My colleagues had noticed me using them so often that a few of them asked if I had an eye infection.

"Just dry eyes," I'd say. They'd nod sympathetically and move on.

The eczema was on my arms and hands, itchy at night, cracked skin in winter, flares that came and went without warning.

I had learned to dress around it.

Long sleeves in summer.

Planning outfits the night before to make sure nothing showed too much.

"I saw both specialists regularly. Not once did either ask about the other condition. Not once did either suggest the two might be connected. It genuinely never occurred to me to ask."

Everything I Tried.
Why Nothing Lasted.

I want to be clear about how much I had actually tried before this.

When Systane stopped being enough, my optician upgraded me to Restasis — a prescription-strength option. It made my eyes more irritated, not less.

She switched prescriptions. The new one caused a burning sensation every time I applied it.

I went back again. She gave me a third option.

The steroid cream for my eczema had started working less well after about a year. I needed to apply more of it to get the same result.

My dermatologist moved me to a stronger potency. The skin on my forearms was starting to look visibly thinner, I noticed it when I held my arm up to the light. I kept using it because there was nothing else.

I tried evening primrose oil capsules for four months after reading about them in an eczema group.

They helped slightly. Not enough to actually matter. I tried fish oil. Same result — marginal, inconsistent, not something I could point to and say "this is working."

I changed my washing powder. My shower gel. My pillowcase fabric. My diet, slightly. Each change reduced something by a fraction. The fundamental picture never changed.

My partner came home one evening and found me sitting quietly at the kitchen table, not doing anything, just sitting.

"What's wrong?"

"I've tried everything I can think of," I told him. "And I feel like I'm going backwards."

He didn't have an answer. There wasn't one. Not yet.

What Maya Said
That Changed Everything

Six weeks later I was at a work dinner. Maya, someone I had worked with two years before, was there.

I remembered her mentioning eczema once, and dry eyes. She had described both the same way I would have: matter-of-factly, like permanent facts of life you just manage.

But sitting across from her that evening, something was immediately different.

Her arms were completely clear. She was wearing a sleeveless top. And she sat through the entire dinner without touching her eyes once.

I waited until we were getting our coats.

"Maya. Your skin looks completely different. What happened?"

"I found out why nothing was working," she said.

"The creams, the drops, all of them were treating symptoms. They were never going to reach the actual cause."

She told me her dry eyes and her eczema — two conditions she had managed separately for years, exactly like me — turned out to share one single root cause.

The same deficiency in the body was driving both. She had not known.

Her doctors had not told her. She had found it herself through research.

"What is it?" I asked.

"What's the cause?"

"It's a fatty acid your body might not be producing enough of," she said.

"Called GLA. You've probably never heard of it. I hadn't."

She sent me the research links that night. I stayed up until 1am reading.

The Thing That Explained
Three Years of Failure

What I found in the research felt like having the lights switched on in a room I'd been navigating in the dark for years.

Many people with eczema have a problem with a specific enzyme that is supposed to produce a fatty acid called GLA — gamma-linolenic acid. GLA is what the skin barrier is structurally built from. Think of it like the mortar between bricks. Without enough of it, the barrier develops gaps. Moisture escapes. Irritants get in. That is the itch, the cracking, the inflammation, the flare up. Not a skin problem in isolation — a structural deficiency.

But here is the part that made me sit up straight at 1am:

The same GLA is what the meibomian glands, glands in your eyelids, use to produce the oil layer of your tear film.

That oil layer is what holds your tears in place and stops them evaporating.

Without enough of it, the oil layer is thin.

Tears evaporate too quickly.

Eyes feel gritty, burning, dry, regardless of how many drops you put in, because drops replace the water.

They do not replace the oil. The oil layer was the problem all along.

One Deficiency. Two Locations. Why Everything I Tried Was Never Enough.

1. Many eczema sufferers have a broken enzyme that cannot produce enough GLA. This is not a surface problem — it is happening underneath every cream and drop that has ever been prescribed.

2. In the skin: GLA is the mortar the skin barrier is built from. Without it, the wall has gaps. Moisture escapes. Irritants enter. Every cream works on the surface of this — none of them close the structural gap from the outside.

3. In the eyes: The same GLA is needed to produce the oil layer of the tear film. Without it, tears evaporate immediately. Eye drops replace the water layer — but the oil layer deficiency remains untouched.

Why The Things I Tried Only Helped A Little: At one point I started taking fish oil because it is one of the most commonly recommended supplements for dry eyes. My optician even mentioned omega-3s, and I kept seeing them recommended in dry eye forums and articles.

What I later learned was that omega-3s and GLA are not the same thing.

Research suggests that many people with eczema may have difficulty converting certain dietary fats into GLA efficiently because of differences in an enzyme involved in fatty acid metabolism.

That caught my attention because I wasn't lacking healthy fats in my diet.

I regularly ate foods that are often recommended for their healthy fat content and had already spent months taking fish oil supplements.

Yet I was still dealing with dry, reactive skin and eyes that constantly felt irritated.

The more I read, the more I realized the issue might not be how much fat I was consuming, but whether my body was producing enough GLA from those fats in the first place.

That meant even though fish oil provides omega-3s, it doesn't provide GLA directly.

As I continued researching, I became more interested in ingredients that naturally contain GLA rather than relying entirely on my body to make it.

What I Did Next

Maya had found a supplement made from black currant seed oil, the only plant source that naturally combines GLA with a plant-based omega-3 and additional repair compounds.

Not fish oil. A different source, a different combination, addressing the pathway from both sides at once.

She had already been on it for four months when I saw her at that dinner.

Her optician had commented on the improvement in her tear film at her last appointment.

Her dermatologist had asked what she had changed.

I ordered it that night.

The company offered a 90-day guarantee use the entire bottle, all of it, and if nothing changes, you get your money back. That felt like the only reasonable thing: give it the full timeline the research suggested, and judge it then.

What Actually Happened —
Week By Week

I gave myself a rule: three months, no judgment before then. I kept using the drops and cream exactly as before. I was not going to let hope skew the results.

Days 1–6

Nothing noticeable. Expected. I kept everything the same.

Day 7

I slept until 5.30am without waking to scratch. It had not happened in months. I noted it in my phone as a small thing and tried not to read too much into it.

Day 11

A Zoom call came through at short notice. I turned the camera on without checking my eyes first or reaching for drops. I realised it afterward — the first time I had done that in well over a year.

Week 3

The nighttime itching had reduced significantly. The skin on my forearms looked visibly calmer. I wore a short-sleeved top to a friend's birthday for the first time in two years. Nobody commented on my arms. That was the entire point.

Week 5

I counted my eye drop usage that week. Twice. I had been using them four to six times daily for eighteen months.

Month 3

My optician examined my eyes at a scheduled appointment. She looked at her notes, looked again. "Whatever you've changed," she said, "it's showing up in the tear film. I want you to keep doing it." She wrote it down in my notes.

The Moment That
Stayed With Me

I sat in the car after that appointment and didn't move for a few minutes.

Three years. Two specialists. Not one conversation between them. Not one question from either about the other condition.

A supplement had done in three months what three years of medical appointments had not: it had connected the two things.

Now, five months in, the steroid cream is at the back of the cabinet.

I use it occasionally.

Eye drops are in one bag, not every bag. My arms have not had a meaningful flare in two months.

My partner noticed before I said anything.

"You seem different," he said one evening.

He was right. When you stop managing two conditions every waking hour, you get that headspace back.

You stop making every small decision through a filter of "but what about my skin, but what about my eyes." That was the part that surprised me most, not just the physical change, but the quiet return of ordinary, unfiltered life.

Since So Many Of You
Have Been Asking...

I have had hundreds of messages since sharing this story asking what supplement I actually took. I have been hesitant to post about it directly because I genuinely do not want this to read like an advertisement, it is not. This is just what happened to me.

But given how many people are asking, and given that I know what it is like to spend years looking for something that actually makes sense: it is called the Calm Skin Capsule by Earth on Skin. It is made from black currant seed oil, the GLA source Maya had told me about, alongside seven other active ingredients.

They offer a 90-day guarantee. Even if you use the entire bottle.

I thought that was worth mentioning because it is the reason I tried it when I was sceptical, there was genuinely nothing to lose.

I am not suggesting it will work for everyone.

I can only tell you what happened for me.

If you have been dealing with both conditions and nothing has fully worked, the GLA connection is worth understanding.

The research is real.

The mechanism is documented. I just wish someone had told me sooner.

The Supplement I Mentioned

Earth on Skin — Calm Skin Capsule. Black currant seed oil with 8 active ingredients addressing the GLA deficiency. The company offers a 90-day money-back guarantee — even if the bottle is empty.

Here is the link to the supplement I take -

https://earthonskin.com/products/black-currant-seed-dry-itchy-skin

* This is a personal story. Individual experiences may vary. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before beginning any supplement. Research referenced: PMC11854708 (2025), King's College London BJD (1984), Review of Optometry (2017).

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