Solutions for Contact Lens Discomfort

How to manage contact lens discomfort? What are the remedies to avoid the problem?  If your eyes do not look great, feel excellent or see well with your contacts on, eliminate the lenses immediately and consult your optometrist to determine which of the following services will fix your issue.

Contact lens discomfort can occur for a range of reasons. In order for contact lenses to work the way they’re supposed to, it is very important to care for them appropriately, following the maintenance and replacement schedule. These guidelines help to keep your eyes healthy and comfortable in contact lenses. If they’re not followed, issues with vision, convenience and other safety issues can take place.

Remedies For Contact Lens Discomfort

Synthetic Tears

Synthetic tears can alleviate periodic dryness. Follow your eye doctor’s recommendations, due to the fact that some eye drops are incompatible with certain sort of contact lenses. Incompatible drops can blemish and destroy lenses. Also, not all drops are designed and authorized for use with contact lenses.

For dryness, don’t use items promoted to “get the red out”– their job is to restrict the small blood vessels that overlie the white of the eye (sclera). Diminishing the size of these blood vessels removes the look of red eyes however does not treat the underlying dryness problem.

Nutritional Supplements

To be comfortable in contact lenses, you have to produce enough tears. However it’s not just the quantity of tear production that is necessary, it’s also the quality. For instance, imbalanced tear chemistry can cause fast tear evaporation– this is simply as much an issue as not producing enough tears.

Research has actually found that the omega-3 fats in salmon and other fish, as well as flaxseed oil, can enhance the oily part of tear structure, which dissuades tear evaporation. Find out more in our Nutrition & Eyes section.

Punctal Occlusion

This involves obstructing the ducts that drain pipes tears far from your eyes by inserting a small piece of silicone or acrylic, called a punctal plug, to decrease tear drainage and thus keep more moisture on the surface area of your eyes. Temporary, dissolving plugs are offered so you can “test drive” this choice to see if punctal plugs work for you.

Contact Lens Discomfort

Contact Lenses For Dry Eyes

If your present lenses fit well and you still experience discomfort, your eye care professional may advise a different kind of lens or a various using schedule. Lots of types of contact lenses are offered today, and you may discover more recent options are more comfortable than your old lenses. Here are a couple of solutions that might make your contact lens use more comfy:

  • Daily disposables. If lenses with built-up deposits are making you uncomfortable, then beginning each day with a brand-new lens might help. This is true especially if you suffer from allergic reactions and are troubled by the airborne irritants that can stick to your lenses, or if your tear chemistry is such that difficult-to-remove lipids and proteins are collecting on your lenses. Several brand names of day-to-day disposable lenses are offered from the major contact lens producers.
  • Lenses with a different water material. Hydrogel (soft) contact lenses hold various quantities of water when they are fully hydrated, based upon qualities of the lens product. Some people are more comfy with lenses in products that have a low water content; others are more comfortable with lenses that have a high water content. If your eyes feel dry, ask your optometrist if altering to lenses with a different water material might help.
  • Silicone hydrogels. These advanced soft lenses permit more oxygen to reach the eyes and may stay moist longer than conventional soft (hydrogel) contact lenses. Silicone hydrogel brand names include Air Optix (Alcon), PureVision (Bausch + Lomb) and Acuvue Oasys (Johnson & Johnson).
  • FDA-indicated for dryness. Some soft contact lenses have actually been specifically established to relieve dryness. For instance, CooperVision’s Proclear lens has FDA clearance for the claim: “may offer better comfort for contact lens wearers who experience moderate pain or symptoms connecting to dryness during lens wear.” Extreme H2O is a brand that does not have such an FDA classification however is preferred by some professionals for contact lens users with dry eyes.

Contact Lens Care Products

Use the brand of contact lens service your eye doctor specifies. Utilizing services or rewetting drops that aren’t suitable with your contacts might break down the quality of the lenses, impacting both visual quality and comfort.

Some lens care systems might work well for most people, however you may be the exception. If your lenses aren’t getting clean enough, they can aggravate or harm the surface of your eye. In this case, your optometrist or ophthalmologist might switch you to a system that requires a bit more work on your part but may do the job better.

Even if your lens care options or eye drops work well at first, some people in time can develop sensitivity to particular solutions, especially those with preservatives. Your optometrist might desire you to change to either non-preserved care systems or to day-to-day disposable lenses, which require no cleaning services.

Orthokeratology

If wearing contact lenses during the day is providing you issues, you may wish to try orthokeratology. This is the fitting of specifically designed gas permeable contact lenses that you put on at bedtime and wear over night. While you are sleeping, the orthokeratology (or “ortho-k”) lenses gently reshape the front surface of your eye so you can eliminate the contacts in the early morning and continue to see well without glasses or contact lenses throughout the day.

The outcomes of ortho-k are temporary and you need to wear the lenses regularly during the night to maintain the vision-correcting effect, but lots of people discover orthokeratology is an outstanding method to fix contact lens pain issues without having to go back to using glasses or undergo LASIK or other vision correction surgery.

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