Bright ideas for dry eyes: red, tired, dry eyes can make anyone want to cry. Find soothing relief with natural eye drops and a simple diet change.(PERSONAL CARE: MAKE THE SWITCH)

If you find yourself squinting or blinking constantly from dry eyes, don't worry--you're not alone. A whopping 20 million Americans suffer from chronic dry eyes. In fact, just about everybody reaches for eye drops occasionally for relief. And if you avoid brands containing harsh chemicals, eye drops can be a safe and effective tool to soothe irritated peepers.

"People who use redness-reducing eye drops a lot are pouring immense amounts of chemicals into their eyes, actually causing irritation," says Marguerite McDonald, MD, FACS, clinical professor of ophthalmology at Tulane University Hospital & Clinic in New Orleans and cornea/refractive surgery specialist, the Ophthalmic Consultants of Long Island in New York. And these chemicals do more than irritate your eyes. "Once eye drops have coated the eyeball, they are reabsorbed into the body, so any chemicals in the drops contribute to the body's chemical load," says Keri Marshall, ND.

Steer Clear of Chemicals

Conventional eye drops claiming to whiten eyes contain vasoconstrictors that reduce the blood supply to the eye, thereby reducing redness. Not only are vasoconstrictors not so great for your eyes, they can be addictive as well. "You can actually get hooked on them so that you need more and more just to get results," McDonald says.

Opting for nonwhitening eye drops, though, won't get you in the chemical dear. Most mainstream brands contain preservatives for a longer shelf life, and these synthetic chemicals can irritate the eyes of some moderate to severe dry eye sufferers, especially when used frequently, McDonald says.

Natural eye drops soothe red eyes with a sterile saline solution combined with fast-acting homeopathic medicine. "Homeopathic eye drops provide ...