In the spring, tree pollen makes life pretty miserable for those of us who are seasonal allergy sufferers. Two years ago, I did an interview for Inside Medicine with an allergist who literally changed my life with a handful of tips that were basically free. If you haven’t read the advice that came out of that interview, check it out here.
We are now halfway into April and “the eyes have it.” Between seasonal allergies causing watery and itchy eyes and the solar eclipse last week (possibly causing solar retinopathy among people who started at partiality), there has been unusual focus on our own viewfinders.
Let’s check out some Google Trends datasets related to our eyes from recent times. The first one shows searches in the US for pollen counts. As you can see, searches spike in April and May every year.
Bottom line: Allergy season is upon us. Get ahead of your symptoms. Here’s that link to all that great advice I got back in 2022.
The second graph I want to share with you shows searches for the term “my eyes hurt.” As you can see, interest in that topic surged after the solar eclipse last week. Now, there were a number of popular science communicators doing the “facepalm” emoji on Threads and Twitter over the past few days, as if collectively saying, “We told you not to look! You didn’t listen!” to the US public. You could almost hear the schadenfreude in the tone of their posts, which often appeared with graphs like this one…
Let me say that I’m not sure that this graph means anything real. Yes, I’m sure there will be a few case reports of rare instances of solar retinopathy in the medical literature, just as we’d expect after any solar eclipse. However, I tend to doubt that the number of cases will reflect anything like the spike in Google search data might seem to be suggesting upon first glance.
Instead, I surmise that this apparently huge increase in people Googling “my eyes hurt” probably reflects a relatively small number of individuals who were worried they had glanced at the partial eclipse when they should not have; that is, I tend to think that hypervigilance drove these Google searches—people being more attentive to mild sensations than they normally would be—rather than genuine eye pathology.
Keep in mind that Google Trends searches are corrected for their own internal highs and lows. If you query Taylor Swift and Jonathan Swift (sigh), both max out at “100” at some point along the graph. If you graph them separately, you don’t get any sense of the scale. So, Jonathan and Taylor both max out at 100, like in these two panels:
But if you put both search terms on the same graph, Johnny suddenly looks a lot less popular, poor guy…
So, I’m pretty convinced that the “my eyes hurt” Google searches last week were both not as meaningful as some may think and possibly not all that common. To test this theory, I graphed Google searches for “my eyes hurt” and “Covid symptoms” from 2020 through today and compared the results:
I think the point is made.
Questions? Feedback? Chime in below in the Comments section!
Your earlier post did not include Levocetirizine (Xyzal); is there any significant difference between it and the other 2nd-generation medications? Also, for eyes, what about Ketotifen (Alaway)? I've found both to be helpful, Xyzal more so than Claritin etc.; Alaway more so than Systane or other wetting drops. I know efficacy will vary with the individual, but is there any more general evidence regarding either? Thanks.