Contact lenses are extremely safe. Still, wearing contact lenses can harm your eyes if you wear them too long, cannot clean them correctly or do not change them as directed by your optometrist.
Contact lenses are thought about medical devices and are controlled by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). For safety factors, they can not be acquired without a professional fitting and a contact lens prescription written by a certified optometrist.
Bad Effects of Contact Lenses
Keep The Oxygen Flowing To Your Eyes
Because contact lenses rest straight on the eye and cover the entire cornea (or, when it comes to gas permeable contact lenses, part of the cornea), they decrease the quantity of oxygen that reaches your eyes from the environment. A good oxygen supply is necessary to keeping your eyes healthy.
You can restrict the possibly harmful impacts of oxygen deprivation from contact lens wear by doing the following:
- Stick to the using schedule your eye doctor advises; dispose of and replace your contacts as directed.
- You also may want to choose modern silicone hydrogel contact lenses. These soft lenses are made from a material that sends more oxygen than traditional soft contact lens materials and may be safer for your eyes in the long run.
- Another option is rigid gas permeable (GP) contact lenses. Gas permeable contacts are smaller sized in size than soft or silicone hydrogel lenses and therefore cover less of the cornea. Also, GP contacts move a significant quantity with each blink, enabling fresh tears to move under the lenses. These two factors decrease the risk of eye issues with gas permeable lenses, compared to using soft contacts.
Contact lenses can cause a range of eye conditions, depending upon the kind of contact lens used, cleaning up solutions, hygiene, fit and using schedule. According to “The Eye Book” complications that are triggered by contact lenses are reversible. Complications include dry eyes, corneal edema, ulcers, neovascularization, conjunctivitis and infections.
Tidy Your Contact Lenses And Case
Side effects of contact lenses also increase the risk of eye damage since bacteria and other infection-causing representatives can accumulate on them. This is especially true as the lenses grow older and deposits build up on the front and back surfaces of the lenses.
Inning accordance with the Brien Holden Vision Institute, eye infections occur only in about 4 of every 10,000 day-to-day contact lens users (0.04 percent) and 20 of every 10,000 individuals who use prolonged wear contact lenses on an over night basis (0.2 percent), but the impacts can be devastating.
You can considerably minimize the risk of contact lens-related eye infections by appropriately cleaning and disinfecting your contacts after each use. Use just the contact lens solutions your eye doctor suggests, and don’t alter brands without first consulting with your doctor.
Likewise, though many contact lens users use “no-rub” contact lens options, recent studies show these items clean your lenses significantly much better if you rub your lenses while washing them with the solution. (These one-step items are also called “multipurpose options,” due to the fact that they consist of ingredients that both clean and sanitize contact lenses.)
It’s likewise extremely important to wash your lens storage case with fresh contact lens service and let it air dry while you are using your contacts. This lowers the risk of the case getting contaminated with microbes that can harm your eyes. You likewise ought to discard and replace your storage case at least every three months.
Also, use fresh multipurpose solution each time you store your lenses. Do not just “complete” option you’ve left in the event from the previous day. Doing so decreases the efficiency of the service, possibly resulting in lens contamination and a major eye infection.
Follow Your Contact Lens Replacement Schedule
Avoid over-wearing your contact lenses and make sure to dispose of and replace them as directed by your eye doctor.
Even if you take care of your lenses as directed, lens deposits continue to develop on your contacts in time. The longer you go before changing your lenses, the higher capacity these lens deposits need to reduce the oxygen supply to your corneas and damage your eyes.
Finally, make sure to see your eye doctor as directed for regular contact lens eye exams. Your optometrist can discover small problems before they end up being huge ones, and help you keep your eyes safe and healthy while you wear contact lenses.