WHAT'S UP WITH ...EYE CRUSTIES

Here's why you sometimes wake up feeling as if you have the sands of the Sahara caked in the corners of your eyes.

- KAYLA BLANTON

Whether you call it eye boogies, crusties, or sleep, that dried goo that accumulates in the corners of your eyelids overnight is annoying but usually harmless. The technical name for the sandy stuff is rheum. “It’s composed of normal biological material found around the eye, including mucus, dried tears, and sloughed skin cells,” says Ashley Hayden, M.D., a board-certified eye surgeon based in Portland, OR. It can look crusty or watery and appear yellow or clear, adds Sonia Kelley, O.D., an optometrist based in Texas. When we’re awake, we blink the stuff away, but at night that cleaning system isn’t active, so the material tends to accumulate.

WHY DO I HAVE EXCESS CRUST?