Contacts: Do’s and Don’ts

Contacts can make your life so much easier by not having to keep track of your glasses and not having something on your face all day long. There are so many pros to contacts but as with any eye accessory, they are not without some extra care.

Contacts are tiny little lenses that you place into your eye to be able to see well without wearing glasses. When you think about it this way, it makes sense that they will be more susceptible to infection.

If you are a veteran contacts wearer or you are just starting to think about making the switch, we want to point out things to remember daily.

Contact Care

It is so important to clean and disinfect any contact lenses you remove for you eye before you put them back in. We can go over the many types of cleaning systems when you pick up your order.

Things to remember:

•  Wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water before touching your contacts
• Rub your contact with clean fingers and then rinse the lenses in solution before soaking them
• Do not use your mouth to re-wet contacts
• Do not use water to rinse or store contacts
• Don’t make a homemade saline solution

Another two big things to remember is that you should NEVER sleep in your contacts or wear them in the shower, pool or hot tub.

While asleep, they can dry out because your eyes produce less tears. If they dry out it could cause your contact to slice your eye. That would open the opportunity for infection in your eyes.

The risk from showering or swimming in contacts is that if your contacts come into contact with water and are left in your eye it can cause infection, such as Keratitis.

By following these few rules, you will save yourself the pain of possible infection.

Did you contract an infection?

No one is perfect. There may be a time that you fall asleep with them in. Or maybe you are so comfortable in them that you keep them in while showering. Some signs to look out for after forgetting proper care:

• Blurred vision
• Discharge from your eyes
• Redness or watering

If you start to feel like something isn’t right its important to make sure you have taken your contacts out. Once out of your eye, reassess the situation and call your eye doctor.

Of course, if you accidentally encounter any complications with your contacts the first course of action should be to call us! We can help go over any questions you may have as well as address any of your concerns.