As a retinal screener, one of the most common complaints I hear from my older patients is that their eyes are watering too much. Particularly when I've had onion soup for lunch, and I'm leaning in close for the eye drops. As a general rule, however, excessive watering in older age is often a sign of dry eye, a revelation which can lead to arguments with certain patients, who insist their eyes are too wet, not too dry. In those cases I tell them it could be keratoconjunctivitis sicca instead.

If I had a pound for every time I've sent a patient to the nearest pharmacy for some lubricating eye drops, I could probably afford to do the MSc in Retinal Screening, but sadly the drops are so cheap, I'd barely make my fortune even if I worked on commission. The fact remains, however, that as retinal screeners, we're probably responsible for the production of more artificial tears than the finalists on The X Factor.

But that could all be about to end. I was taking an eye history from a new patient this week, and he told me that until a couple of years ago he suffered from the most terrible dry eyes, which watered constantly and were frequently sore. But that all changed one day in 2010 when he found an overnight cure.

I'm naturally skeptical of anything patients tell me, including their date of birth and GP, but I took the bait, and asked him what the cure was. He said "Honey". I said "On toast?". He said "No, in my eyes".

My first thought was to consider the possible implications of a patient with diabetes ingesting neat glucose through their eyes. My second thought was to ask "What's next - marmalade for earache?". But having pondered the idea for a moment, I replied that the antibacterial properties of Manuka honey are well established, so I suppose it's not impossible it could have benefits in other areas. The patient shrugged and said "Well I don't use that. I use Tesco's."

Apparently he first heard of the cure in some far-flung land (I think it was the Isle of Wight), and since starting to smear supermarket honey on his eyes two years ago, he's never looked back. Mainly because his eyelids are stuck shut. But his dry eye has completely cleared up, and he now swears by the stuff. Like a trooper.

At the time, I gave his story about as much credence as the lady who once told me her retinal haemorrhages were due to a nurse over-tightening the cuff on her blood pressure monitor, but having done a little research of my own, it appears there could be something in it. The internet is awash with anecdotal (and highly questionable) evidence of the effects of honey on dry eyes, but if you dig around, there are one or two slightly more credible sources.

One comes from the Journal of Apicultural Research, which is the bee all and end all in honey studies, and published a paper in 2007 entitled Using 20% Honey Solution Eye Drops in Patients with Dry Eye Syndrome. Their sample was small at only 36 patients, 19 of whom were given the eye drops, but they reported significant improvement compared with those given artificial tears, and even suggested a positive effect on the state of the cornea in those using honey eye drops.

Another comes from the home of Manuka honey, Australia, and the Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. They published a study in 2006 which looked at the Effect of Antibacterial Honey on the Ocular Flora in Tear Deficiency and Meibomian Gland Disease. They were cautious not to overstate their results, but the authors' findings were positive enough for them to conclude that "there is sufficient preliminary data to warrant further study of the effects of antibacterial honey in chronic ocular surface diseases".

Fortunately, that 'further study' has been carried out by a bloke from Glasgow, whose findings were published in the indisputable Bible of modern medicine and cutting edge health advice, The Daily Mail. They reported earlier this year that a retired soul DJ who knows a lot about ocular health due to having been shot in the eye with a bow & arrow (I expect there's a tapestry depicting the event in his local pub), had cured his chronic blepharitis with a 99p jar of honey.

Medical proof doesn't get much more watertight than The Daily Mail, so by this point I'm thinking "Ok... so honey cures dry eye and blepharitis. If it can do anything for cataracts, I can solve all our pensioners' problems". I wasn't serious, obviously. But maybe I should have been. After a bit of digging, I found a brief report of a study carried out in Russia in the 1980s, and published in a Russian ophthalmology journal twenty-two years ago, which is entitled Use of Honey in Conservative Treatment of Senile Cataracts. Patients with cataracts were followed for an average of seven years, and whilst 65% of those in the control group got progressively worse, the same was true of only 44% of those given honey eye drops.

That study suggested that honey could halt or slow the progression of cataracts, but another carried out jointly by the University of The Andes in Venezuela and Cardiff University in the UK, goes even further. Published in the Journal of Health Science in 2008, and entitled Putative Anticataract Properties of Honey Studied by the Action of Flavonoids on a Lens Culture Model, the paper suggests that honey could actually reverse the growth of cataracts and produce a reduction in lens opacification.

So that's dry eye, blepharitis and cataracts. At this rate, my patients will have nothing left to complain about. Forget financial backing from Big Pharma, I need to do a sponsorship deal with Gale's.