There’s a hole in my eyes! Oh look there’s one in yours too! But not to worry, it’s completely normal and it’s there by design.

Welcome to SoToday’s new category, “Did You Know?”, here we’ll scour the internet to bring you fun facts and interesting things about everything. I hope you enjoy our first post.

Let’s get to the hole in your eyes, grab a mirror, look closely! What do you see? Yes but I meant beyond your beautiful face, look to your eyelids, to the bottom of them. Go on, check, i’ll wait. If you look closely enough you should see a tiny almond-shaped hole about two millimetres away from the inner corner of each eyelid. The scientific term for this is “Lacrimal Punctum”.

Now that you’ve seen it, if you’re like me then you’re wondering why it’s there and what it does and SoToday has got the answers. Like every other part of us, the size of this hole varies from person to person, so it might be easier to harder for you to find than others, if you haven’t found yours yet, no worries, it just means you haven’t found yours yet. So what does this tiny hole do? If you guessed ‘produce tears’, then congratulations!!! You’re wrong, close, but wrong, that job is for our tear ducts. This little hole is essentially our eye’s drainage system, think of it as a tiny sink in your eyes, or a little gutter. Ever wondered why your nose runs when you cry? Your Lacrimal Punctum is the culprit.

Although it doesn’t produce the tears, it’s responsible for draining them, an IFLScience article which this post is based on, described it’s function, saying it is a bit like the opening of a canal that connects the eye to the Lacrimal Sac. From that sac, the tears drain through the lacrimal duct to the nose. So this is what happens when your nose runs after crying for a while.

Like every other thing in existence it sometimes has faults and doesn’t always work as intended, so what happens when it doesn’t work as it’s supposed to? There’s a medical procedure that can be done to ‘plug’ the hole. It involves placing tiny cylindrical plugs into the hole to stop dry eyes. If your Lacrimal Punctum is hyperactive and excessively draining fluids, this procedure will stop it and keep your ryes healthy and moist as it should be.

Now lastly, you’ve probably at some point in your life met someone or seen a video of someone squirting milk out of their eyes, again, this hole is the culprit. This ‘hole’ can sometimes backfire and reverse it’s flow. What that means is that it can also cause tears, discharge, air and even blood to squirt out. Oh and milk! For the weird ones amongst us.

That’s about it for the hole in our eyes, if you like this post, then please leave a comment, tell me if you found your Lacrimal Punctum, was it easy to spot? Also, please subscribe so you never miss any of our future posts. Thank you.

Source: IFLScience

Image: Diogo Melo Rocha/Wikimedia Commons