pH 6.5-6.6, too acidic for most people - 2% dexpanthenol is too high
My natural tear pH is 7.3 I believe, like for most people, or anyway, above 7.0 for sure.  As such, this drop is too acidic, at pH 6.5-6.6, measured with 6 pH papers. so it's only good for those people whose natural pH is around 6.6 , maybe 4% of people.  There is another product called Hylo Care with pH 6.9 or 7.0, made by a German company too, but that one gave the worst red eyes ever when used at night and not blinking.  this HydraSense gave the worst itch of any drop, when I tried it the second time, when used 1 hour after Hylo Care that has the same ingredients minus NaCl.  This Hydra has low molecular weight hyaluronate, so this may cause red eyes and new arterioles forming in the long run.<br /><br />I tested it and it was a very pleasant drop and feeling first time, unlike most drops I tested, so that's A+. However, the issue is that it has 2% dexpanthenol like HYlo Care, so you only notice how bad it could be if you test it during a 30 min nap or 8 hour sleep with no blinking.  So, this is the great illusion for a lot of drops, you test it once or 50 times during daytime and look at 20x mirror and it's fine, but then at night it's a disaster as exposure time increases 900 times and your eyes are destroyed.  However, due to acidity, a tiny % of arterioles became redder, 2 near nasal corner even the first test, so I take it that it's not for most people, but the minority with more acidic pH.<br /><br />Customer care explained it's 2% dexpanthenol, like Hylo Care lists it at 2% .  I dislike that no paper indicates Bayer molecular weight for hyaluronate.  Since Canada approved Hylo products for post surgery due to high quality high molecular weight hyaluronate, I think they know it's better than Bayer, but this drop may still be very good for those with low pH, that may be damaged by the higher Hylo Care pH.<br /><br />Table 2 pf Transl Vis Sci Technol. 2019 Nov; 8(6): 2. lists Hylo products molecular weight of hyaluronate, the higher the better most authors say.  So, I wish these companies would be more transparent and write MW of HA on their bottle, without us having to go to pubMed to search for it for hours.  :)<br /><br />High MW HA (hyaluronate) is anti-inflammatory, while low MW is inflammatory.  How much inflammation we need is not clear, but too much antiinflammatory creates immune suppression, so it's complex.  :)<br /><br />  It makes no sense to me to make one drop for Canada, where most people's pH is 7.0 and above, and make it 6.5.  Why not make a drop benefitting most consumers, not just a minority or have 2 versions, one with pH 6.5 and one pH 7.2?  More citric increases shelf life though, I wonder what the reason for low pH is.  Is it shelf life or the well being of people?<br /><br />I believe dexpanthenol is not in USA drops because it may be too high of a concentration and have serious side effects. Have you ever thought of trying iLux, LipiFlow, meibomian gland massage, MiBoFlow, TearCare, punctal plugs, etc, sealed wrap around safety glasses to protect from wind, etc?  These things can help.  While these drops may be useful for certain situations like post surgery, etc, for regular dry eye users etc they may be too dangerous.  We are centuries away from safe drops, these drops today are all very toxic and poisons by future centuries standards, so recall that and think about punctual plugs to nourish eyes with 2000 chemicals in natural tears, instead of just 5 chemicals at concentrations 300 times above natural.<br /><br />We are basically like 1st century peasants, ignorant and thinking we know stuff about eye drops.  The natural tears are so complex!<br /><br />While you may not use this drop before going to bed, like I didn't for 1 year or so, the cumulative damage would still be there, even if less.  Kli Mo Au 1996;209(2-3):84-8 says drops with dexpanthenol were better than those without at healing dry eyes disturbances of corneal epithelium permeability. Dexpanthenol or panthenol, proB5, C9H19NO4, the alcohol version of B5, a transparent moisturizing liquid, OH-CH2C(CH3)2CH(OH)C(=O)NH (CH2)3OH, travels thru mucous membranes and it is oxidized to hygroscopic (water retaining) B5 (CH2-OH at the NH end becomes COOH) where it becomes part of the CoA, which aids cell growth. It is also used topically to promote skin or eyelid healing. However, a study on conjunctiva cell viability found a Hylo Care like drop (citrate, B5, HA) caused 64% of cells to be unviable, vs only 30% for other Hylo, due to lower Care pH or proB5 itself.<br /><br />So, i would suggest to try to yawn to generate tears, use punctal plugs or some other dry eye treatment options, like saline 0.9% solution etc... and test every drop using the method of the mirror explained below, which helped me to find out how bad many drops are (mos thick drops and ointments are ultra dangerous and should be tested in 20-30 min naps with no blinking first to assess safety, since contact time at night would be increased 1000 fold, since it's thick and we don't blink, so damage can be catastrophic if used over and over without you noticing much at 1x mirror):<br /><br />Buy a $10 20x mirror which is worth trillions, because it helps us test every new drop and bottle we buy, prevent damage that costs trillions to fix at our current tech level; make sure you don’t sit too close to the 2700K light bulb, to avoid too much ocular stress from the light.  A future device could allow us to see things even better and safer.  This also tells us how good our sleep is each day: bad sleep means damage to every cell of the body, some of it irreversible; look at the eyes each morning, and evening at least, for 1 second, eyes mirror our entire body: how healthy is the white of the eye? Many drops (Refresh Optive, Hylo Gel/Care, etc) are gel-like or thick, so they can block the nasolacrimal tear drainage ducts at night, make the eyelids sticky with thick lubricants, form cornea ridges of lubricant (HA, CMC), even during daytime if using cold compress or taking a nap, ridges that cause ‘foreign body sensation’ inflammatory response, leading to red eyes in the morning similar to having an eyelash inside. Only use any drop, gel, ointment @ night after testing it 10+ times during 10 days by 20x mirror checking eyes 20+ times/day, and then during 5 daytime naps to check effects during 1 hour of no blinking (since this increases contact time 100 fold and allows to see if that drop reddens eyes or not after 1 hour; if 1 hour test passes with no redness, also test it twice for 2-3 hour naps (or weekends after waking up early to drink water or pee and going back to bed) to make sure eyes are not red or uncomfortable; if red, don’t ever use at night, since 8 h is longer than 1 h or 3; it simply means your eyes cannot tolerate that much exposure); if you use thick drops at night, each morning clean eyelid meibum orifices of sticky dried drops if any, to get lipids flowing. Let eyes blink for 2 hours before daytime testing again to avoid irritation or damage with weirder thicker drops that take longer to wash out; at night, we don’t blink and exposure time to chemicals by ocular cells increases 900 times; test all drops 1. morning, then 2. afternoon, then 3. evenings (less time to blink, generate tears to wash); if OK, move on to testing for 4. 1 hour naps, 5. 2 hour naps, 6. 3-4 hour naps or late morning oversleep, then 7. finally short night: 6-8 hour max first 8. long sleep 12 hour. The drops that cause no redness or discomfort after night use, are the ones that are safest to use during the day too, it means that they cause the least unseen damage that is so small it takes years to notice its effects and you will blame it on ‘bad sleep’ or else.  When I say night I mean a night when you sleep well, relaxed and don’t blink, not a hectic night of anxiety and blinking that pushes all drop or ointment out fast.  Blinking a lot is leading to wrong conclusions about the safety of products, hence companies could be required by IPA or FDA to write “We are in the stone age in the Pharma industry.  Centuries away from making a drop with the 2000 chemicals in natural tears that expires in 3 days not 3 years or months.  As such, we suggest you read the IPA PDF on how to use other methods than toxic poisonous drops we sell, which in future centuries are called poisons.  But if you tried everything else, please see side effects and potential toxicities in the attached 100 page PDF at this website, and do a test before using this eye drop or gel, ointment with eyes closed for more than 5 minutes (especially at night or naps): sit with eyes closed 5 minutes first (then 10, 20, 30 minutes), relaxing or napping or listening to relaxing music and then see redness with a 20x mirror (since 1x shows almost nothing clearly) and comfort level.  Also note that other drops with polar lipids may increase cornea permeability to these toxic ingredients, so wait 2 hours between drops ideally after you have been blinking a lot and washed out the other drop well.  If no discomfort or redness, these poisons may not be as damaging as other drops for your eye biochemistry.  But try use saline when possible.”; just like cosmetic companies write on some products instructions “do an allergy test first, to see if your skin tolerates this”, cornea is like the skin. In studies they don’t account for the confounding factors of 1. nasolacrimal duct partial blockage, 2. blinking during sleep 50x more, 3. sleeping on one side (causes the eye opposite to the side to have the stuff fall out of the eye more into the nasal corner outer area) for some people, so they lead to studies with different conclusions.  Alkaline drops are better used 2nd half of day when our pH is more alkaline.  Since today you would not use eye drops manufactured in the 15th century by ignorant ‘alchemists’, which would be full of toxic compounds in plants and nonsterile, you would never put the ‘poisons by 25th century standards’ that we call ‘artificial tears’ in your eyes and if you had no choice due to inability to generate tears by yawns, etc, you would use 20x mirror to see 5 seconds BEFORE and 1, 3 and 10, 30, 90, 500 minutes AFTER eye redness, floaters, comfort and log it in into an Excel or other table you/NIH makes, to make it easy to test 10 times every new bottle, since human Quality Control is not that good (did temp during warehouse storage (amazon?), shipping affect hot/cold weather degrading compounds?).  Even for regular use of drops that seem OK, you would check BEFORE and AFTER with 20x mirror always, to enable you to see eye condition 10 times a day at least. We want to compare apples with apples, not oranges, so to ensure that we are always looking at right and left eye with the same brightness of lumens, same angle, etc, we need dedicate a portable lamp, tape it to the table or counter or etc, fix some object nearby to support the 20x mirror in a fixed position and make a label for upper and lower lip that you bring your lip or other face feature to, to always look at it form the exact same angle and light level, to avoid illusions of ‘it seems redder’, which may be due to holding mirror further away, or using less light due to a different angle, etc.  This taped to a frame mirror (use a 2700K soft white bulb, to avoid too much blue light when so close) enabled me to go from checking eyes once a day, and perceiving it as a hassle, to happily checking eyes 20-40 times daily sometimes when testing new drops and effects of sticky hyaluronate drops (watch the temporal eye corner when you blink and see if hyaluronate gel like sticky stuff is there after 5, 10, 40, 300 minutes to evaluate optimal hyaluronate drop viscosity and whether foreign body sensation, ‘eyelash in eye’ feeling exists for some drops due to extreme viscosity causing needless inflammation and cytokine storm, the effect of cold compresses and procedures, etc (like how cold compress solidifies or makes hyaluronate more sticky, etc). Besides the 1. redness test, 5 minutes after eyes closed with a new drop (use phone timer, so all drops get the same exact 5 minutes, to have scientific comparison not subjective), we have the 2. comfort test (sandy, itchy, stings, burning, too thick?) and the 3. floaters test: thicker drops form a ‘contact lens’ like film, which changes the neuroadaptation of the eye (neuroadaptation is the process of eyes no longer seeing floaters), which can make floaters more visible for 20 minutes: look at the white sink or a white surface and move eyeball left and right, before placing a drop and 5 minutes after eyes closed with that drop, to see if floaters are more visible; this will tell if the refractive index of the drop is similar to that of natural tears or if anything unusual happens. For the sake of your own eyes having a simple to use 20x mirror fixed workstation (5% the lamp, 1$ a frame or object support, 9$ mirror) that you can use quickly while sitting is important: it helps you do many things related to eyes, remove eyelashes, express glands, trim eyelashes, etc very fast and safer, to evaluate which drops are most compatible with your eyes the most, etc much better. It’s very important to check eyes 10 times when using new drops, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 30, 45, 90, 300, 500 minutes after a drop, gel, ointment and repeat tests many times to get objective data not weak conclusions based on spare data. Fixed 20x mirror also helped me to discover 9-16-21 how most redness of the eye, the tiny arterioles are on the conjunctiva (33 μm, vs 70 μm for human hair), while the big thick vessels are on the cornea; you can see that yourself by using 20x mirror and moving eyelid up and down to see which arterioles are moving. This shows us the conjunctiva gets irritated fast and you can see how easily the redness relievers or any drop can shrink both cornea and conjunctiva cells.  You go to doctor, he recommends a drop, then you use more care before the 1-2 month check-up that reveals an improvement in some parameters like tear duration, etc  - but this is superficial, since it hides the long-term effects only you can see with your meticulous records before and after each drop use, in a normal stressful day, not tear break up time increasing 50% before appointment due to using drop right before it, etc and treating eyes nicely last 2 days; long-term effects are often hidden by one test of ocular status.<br />Why be naive and believe the info or lies Pharma marketing departments deliver (they don’t tell people to use 20x mirror to see what drops do to their eyes!), why not do your own research too and ‘quality control’? They don’t know everything and they often hide more than 98% of what they know, publish what they wish, never tell us much about what is inside, what properties it has, MW of polymers, concentration, etc. We are left in the dark, easy to manipulate and deceive, victims of the state of eternal war where everybody hides and obfuscates info, afraid others will use it to create lethal viruses, weapons via eye drops or any medical tech.  Pharma hides info not much because they want profits or don’t care, but often because any knowledge of eye drops or anything medical has dual use:  it can be used by foreigners to slowly exterminate others.  Also, they don’t want people to know how bad some drops could be, since nobody would buy them. I even put a mirror near my computer to check my eyes at 1x every half hour or so and a 20x mirror with suction cups stuck to this mirror to check eyes at 20x easily by moving head slightly, and take computer breaks, use cold compress when they get red.  $ stores have 10x mirrors that you can place in more places to remind yourself to check eyes at 10x at least and if redness, then check 20x to see; eyes can get red before you feel any dryness or discomfort, so mirrors can help you a lot to keep eyes healthy. After you use it a little, the light from the bulb can cause the transparent light reflecting edge of mirror (if your mirror edge is transparent) to appear as a reflection of a circle around your pupil, which may scare the hell out of you when you first notice it, it’s nothing wrong with your yes, just a reflection that moves as you move the mirror. It may thus be better to get a mirror with a solid color edge.  It’s ultra critical to check eyes with 20x mirror when waking up, to see which vessels are red and know if it’s degree 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 of redness (each degree has specific arterioles red that you know get red only at that level) instead of somewhat red (more scientific, you can also do it at 5 am when you go pee or drink some water in the middle of the night to evaluate how well some ointment or drop combination or night moisture mask worked).  This also helps because 1x doesn’t allow you to see small mucus bits, because if you placed any somewhat new drop (sticky hyaluronate) or ointment and the eye doesn’t like some ingredients, it will secrete protective mucus that merges with the ointment or gel, transforms it and is coming out of the nasal corner of the eye;  the mirror allows you to see if any mucus is still left in the nasal corner and remove it with some saline solution.  You don’t want that mucus to be there for hours of the day as it will cause unncessary redness and inflammation that prevents the healing of cornea due to dryness caused damage during night dryness. We can see redness, tiny unhealthy blood vessels appearing and beginning of dry eyes 20 years before dry eye symptoms (or endless diseases caused by bad sleep that makes eyes visibly redder only on 20x mirror) appear, you cannot do that with 1x; this $2 mass produced mirror saves society $2 million in healthcare costs (to keep someone alive to 90 or 100 in decent condition, delaying aging diseases by 25 years) per person if done from age 5, teaching good sleep, eating, exercising, digital screen habits from toddler stage; for 100 million people this is $200 trillion saved; the mirror tells you when it’s time to practice universal loving kindness towards yourself and get some rest and/or stop any activity that made eyes red: eyes reflect cardiovascular health thruout the body and it’s atherosclerosis, inflammation that kills most humans. Our health is worth 2 seconds/day.
Rating: 2 stars