what’s the purpose of the gunk that ends up in you’re eyes when you sleep and what’s it called ?
In: Biology
Eye discharge is a combination of mucus, oil, skin cells and other debris that accumulates in the corner of your eye while you sleep.
Your eyes produce mucus throughout the day, but a continuous thin film of tears bathes your eyes when you blink, flushing out the rheum before it hardens in your eyes.
When you’re asleep — and not blinking — eye discharge collects and crusts in the corners of your eyes and sometimes along the lash line, hence the term “sleep” in your eyes.
Taken from allaboutvision . Com
When you sleep your body recharges. When you are fully rested but still sleeping the excess rest leaks out of your eyes and crystalises. This collects in the corners of your eyes and that is why we call it sleep. Save it and when you get tired eat it as it is in fact concentrated energy.
It’s dried up eyeball juice that can’t be sucked back into your head (through the nasolacrimal duct) when your eyes are shut. Serves no purpose, it’s a byproduct.
There was a Dr. Who episode that had aliens made the stuff.
It’s a type of Rheum called Mucin. However other names for it include sleep, sleepy-seeds, sleepy buds, sleepy sand, sleepers, eye crust, eye goop, cheese, eye boogers, dream candy, winkies, goggles, sleepy dirt, or sleepy dust.
It’s mucus. A very thin layer of it is produced on the eye to help defend against germs entering the body since the eyes are an orifice.
While you’re asleep, the body temporarily stops producing it around the eyes, and so it dries up, creating the hardened little bits you find when you wake up.
My understanding is that it doesn’t have a purpose; it’s a side effect of the fact that you’ve had your eyes closed all night.
Rather than your tears being distributed over the eye with motion/blinking, they’ll just pool around the tear ducts. Then they dry out, leaving a residue of salt and mucus.
Not sure if there’s a scientific name for it as it’s just dried up tears.
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In Croatia, we call it krmežlji. Krmit is a slang for sleeping, so my interpretation for translation would be “sleepers”.
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