There’s something about contact lenses that makes getting dry eye symptoms – temporary blurry/filmy vision, ‘blink to clear’, ‘lens awareness’, gritty eyes, ‘makes you wish to rub your eyes’, dry eyes, tired eyes – more likely. Dry feeling eyes is among the main causes for people reducing or ceasing contact lens wear.
It can occur in two methods. Contact lens wear can ‘enhance’ any underlying dry eye – that is, make things more noticeable to people who currently knew they have dry eye, and in some cases provide symptoms to people that had low-grade, non-symptomatic dry eye. Contact lens wear can also, it appears, offer reversible dry eye symptoms to people who have no detectable dry eye signs prior to contact lens wear.
What Causes Red Eyes and Blurry Vision
There are environmental things that can push a non-symptomatic contact lens user to being symptomatic:
- Type of work – screen based work is generally done at a higher level of gaze than paper based work, leaving more of the eye exposed to the environment.
- Type of work – costs longer durations looking at the very same location is most likely to provide dry eye symptoms than if your work includes more visual variety.
- Type of work – people blink less the more they are concentrating on a job.
- Type of work – people are most likely to report dry eye symptoms if they are doing ‘dull’/ repeated tasks than if they are doing creative work.
- Environment – hot air, strong air circulations, low humidity environments all increase tear evaporation of the eye, making dry eye symptoms most likely. Where I live, there’s constantly a rise of contact lens dry eye at the beginning of winter season once the heaters get turned on.
- Medications and medical conditions can impact dry eye symptoms.
So, without doing anything to your contact lenses, you may be able (or maybe not) to lower dry eye symptoms.
How to Deal with Red Eyes and Blurry Vision
There are a number of things that can be done to assist get in touch with lens users through dry eye symptoms – ask at your next eye test if any of these might assist:
- Lens design – if a contact lens fits too securely, it might be comfortable to start with however worsen as the day goes on.
- Lens material – material softness, and wettability vary from one lens to another.
- Lens hydration characteristics – most soft contact lenses are about 60% water, and they can lose water content throughout the day, causing changes lens fit, and thus lens awareness on the eye. Some lens products ‘hold their water’ better than others.
- Rehydrating the lens part-way through the day by adding lubricant eye-drops, or.
- Rehydrating the lens part-way through the day by taking them out, popping them in their case with solution for a few minutes, can typically give lenses a brand-new lease on life for the 2nd half of the day.
- Lens transferring – some lens materials collect more deposits during the day, and during their life-span than others.
- Likewise being more cautious with suggested disposal cycles, or.
- Transferring to day-to-day non reusable contact lenses, can make a big distinction to people who are problem depositors.
- Contact lens solution choice – an interesting study found some combinations of contact lens solutions and contact lens materials resulted in more dry spots on the eye than others.
- Don’t reduce your contact lens cleansing routine – do all the actions, keep your lenses as clean as possible.
- Using times – attempt not to push your eyes to their limit. Keep an updated set of specifications, so that you don’t need to keep wearing your contacts if your eyes are feeling dry.
- Disposal durations – Many of the dry eye contact lens wearers I see are people who push their contact lens disposal durations out too far. It’s simply bad for the eyes to keep using each set of lenses till your eyes complain. It may not seem like economic sense, but the perfect in non reusable contact lenses is to start a fresh lens before the previous one is offering you issues.
- Daily disposables are a good option for some dry eye contact lens wearers, for two factors. To start with, every day is a fresh lens. Second of all, since the lens is only used once, some brands of everyday disposables in fact consist of a lubricating representative that slowly disperses out of the lens during the day.
- Help out your eyes tear production by keeping your eyelids in good order. A warm compress on the lids at the end of the day, and/or a cover hygiene program like LidCare, can assist support the functioning of the glands in the eyelid that produce parts in your tears.
- Lubricant eye-drops can be helpful to keep the lens hydrated, and to restore a clear, clean layer of tears over the front surface area of the contact lens. Lubricant drops always work best preventatively – that is, discover your eye’s patterns, and after that use drops to avoid the symptoms. As soon as your getting dry eye symptoms, drops can be helpful, however the opportunity for them to do their best work has been missed out on. The preservatives in some drops are not advised for use during contact lens wear.
Everybody’s eyes are various – what works for your buddy might not be what’s needed for you.
Dry eye symptoms in contact lens wear can originate from a great deal of various sources. And there are great deals of possible fixes, so make sure to talk about it at your next eye test if dry eye symptoms are an issue for you.