When it comes to the colour of your peepers, don’t go changing.
Just when we thought we had reached peak idiocy in the realm of dubious internet health trends, along comes a fresh warning from folks who actually know what they’re talking about to stop doing dangerous stuff to sensitive bits of our bodies.
As our colleague Penny Durham observed in the Back Page recently, the social media platform TikTok really is the gift that keeps on giving for journalists scratching about for fresh fodder focusing on human foibles.
Today’s bounty comes to us via the American Academy of Ophthalmology which has raised an alarm over the spruiking of eye-colour changing solutions which are readily available online or over the counter from a pharmacy near you.
These drops allegedly can change the user’s eye colour by messing about with the amount of melanin in the iris. You can see what the promoters claim the products can achieve, via vague scientific mumbo-jumbo and spurious before-and-after shots here.
What could possibly go wrong? Quite a bit, actually, according to the ophthalmologists.
Not only do the eyedrops not do what they say they do on the box, they are not FDA approved, meaning they have not been tested for safety or efficacy, and they also hold the potential to cause a fair bit of eye damage.
Such as? How about inflammation, infection, light sensitivity, increased eye pressure, glaucoma and permanent vision loss.
“Social media and the internet are full of potentially dangerous eye health claims. Bottom line, the academy advises the public to never put anything in the eye that isn’t made to go in the eye,” Dr JoAnn A. Giaconi, a clinical spokesperson for the academy, said in a media release.
“Here’s the reality, there’s no evidence that they do anything at all, and no evidence that they’re safe.”
If folks really feel they have to change their eye colour, then the safe way to do so is to use prescribed, dispensed, and professionally fitted coloured contact lenses, the ophthalmologists added.
And if you are wondering if such warnings are valid for an Australian audience, a quick Google search reveals there are dozens of eye-colour-changing solutions readily available for local purchase by gullible and/or fact-deprived consumers.
Still, the colour-changing eyedrops are probably a bit safer than corneal tattooing, right?
Sending story tips to penny@medicalrepublic.com.au won’t send you blind.
