What is "pink eye" or conjunctivitis"?

What is "pink eye" or conjunctivitis"?

Harold Kaiser (Practicing Allergist and Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of Minnesota Medical School) gives expert video advice on: How are insect allergies treated?; What are "food allergies"?; What are "hives"? and more...

The same sort of allergies that can occur in the nose can also occur in the eyes, causing conjunctivitis, or "pink eye". In other words, wherever the mucus secreting areas are exposed to an environment where you get dust or pollen, you can get eye allergies. Pink eye is just a descriptive name for the inflammation that occurs in the eye when you get either a foreign body in the eye like dust, or you get an allergic reaction because you put some cat pollen, some ragweed, or some dust mites on your finger and scratched your eye. There's nothing specific about pink eye, it's simply a descriptive form and it can occur from infection, from allergy, from irritation, and from having something in the eye.