This is not the way to make your brown eyes blue.
If you’ve been eyeing those supposed eye color-changing eye drops being pushed on TikTok and other social media platforms, beware. Such drops may not work to change your eye color. Even worse, putting something not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in your eye could end up changing your eye color to something you don’t want like red and send you rushing to the emergency room.
That’s why the the American Academy of Ophthalmology has issued a warning “sounding the alarm on over-the-counter eye drops advertised as eye color-changing solutions.” The warning emphasized, “These products are not FDA approved, have not been tested for safety or efficacy, and could potentially damage the eyes.”
When people talk about having brown, blue or green eyes, they are typically talking about just the iris-which is the ring around the pupil—and not the entire eyeball. If your entire eyeball is brown, blue or green then you are either looking at some other ball besides your eyeball or should see a doctor as soon as possible.
The color of your iris depends on how much melanin is in it and how the melanin is spread throughout the iris. Since melanin is a brown pigment, those with brown eyes have more melanin than those with blue or green eyes. In fact, most everyone is born with blue eyes. Over the first three years of life, those blue eyes may turn brown as more melanin accumulates in the iris. So, if you do have brown eyes—which is the most common eye color in world—you could say, “I have more melanin in my iris than you do” to others who don’t.
Now, those manufacturing and pushing these supposed eye-color changing eye drops have been claiming that an ingredient in those drops can somehow change the melanin levels in your iris. But what concrete scientific evidence do they offer supporting such claims? How about none?
Don’t be fooled by things like before-and-after photos or videos of people using the product. That’s not real scientific evidence. Unless you personally know these people, you have no idea whether they even used the product or how their images may have been doctored. And, in this case, “doctored” means digitally altered and does not imply that real medical doctors were involved in any way.
Let’s suspend this need-scientific-evidence-to-make-claim things for a second and say that these drops were able to destroy melanin in some way. Well, pigment ain’t in your eye just for show and to get other people to say, “You have lovely eyes.” Melanin can help protect your eye cells against light. Plus, other parts of your eye like your retina can use melanin to function properly. Eye drops typically won’t stay in only one part of eye even if you tell them to do so. Therefore, they can easily spread beyond the iris. And indiscriminately destroying melanin in different parts of your eye could in turn lead to all kinds of eye damage.
And your eyes are pretty darn important. They are what allow you to see stuff on TikTok, Instagram and other similar social media platforms in the first place. Since your eyes can be very sensitive—which is one of the reasons you don’t regularly slap your and others’ eye balls as a greeting—it doesn’t take much to damage them. Moreover, your eyes are not only the windows to your soul. They can be windows to your body in general too. Something that enters through your eye like a virus, bacteria or other pathogen could rapidly spread to other parts of your body as well. Therefore, you should be extra cautious about anything you put in them.
This is yet another example of why you shouldn’t be relying on random social media posts alone for medical advice. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram can have so much quackery that they can seem like freaking ponds of misinformation and disinformation.
If you really want to change your eye color, consider wearing colored contact lenses. Actually, consider wearing colored contact lenses that have been prescribed, fitted and dispensed by a genuine and appropriately qualified eye professional. I’ve covered for Forbes previously the dangers of using over-the counter—or under-the-counter for that matter—contact lenses. Even when something is made out of the right material, it can be contaminated with bad stuff like viruses, bacteria, parasites or other pathogens when proper manufacturing, storage and placement procedures are not followed.
So whenever you hear claims about eyes from anyone on social media, keep an eye out for what scientific evidence is being used, whether any products being advertised have been FDA-approved and whether the person making the claims is even qualified to do so. Otherwise, you may even end up putting your eye out, which would leave you more than blue in many ways.
