Contact lenses have experienced a long time development and almost have no technology limit on its quality. However, we hear a lot of events that people are badly hurt by using contact lenses. Then what is the problem? What mainly causes damage to eyes when using contact lenses?
The answer is actually easy. Most of the time, the problems are basically due to improper use of contacts. It is a fact that no situation in this world exists that cannot be made much worse by human ignorance, laziness and stupidity. Therefore, we should use contacts in a right way to avoid any bad things happening to our eyes.
What are the bad things to contacts and thus our eyes?
Careless cleaning habits of lenses
This is the most common risk factor to eyes. As we know, eyes and tears can produce various proteins which will adhere to the lenses. A careful cleaning habit can remove the build up on lenses. However, if you are not careful enough when doing the clean work or you just skip the cleaning procedure or you use the old solution, substances will form a thin film in the lenses, resulting in blurred vision, eye infections or mechanical damages. The most serious situation is that your eyes may go completely blind.
External contaminants and dirt
This is the second common hazard to eyes. You’d better not swim or stay in a hot tub with contacts unless your contacts are covered by watertight swimming goggles. You’d better be away from environments with substance like solvents, acids, cleaning solution, dust, pollen and other allergens when wearing contacts. The substances above will be trapped in and outside the lenses which are bad to eyes. Furthermore, do not try to moisten lenses with mouth directly instead of using fresh solution or approved eye drops.
Wearing time of contacts
This is the third common risk to eyes. Though some contacts makers claim that their contacts can guarantee long time wearing in a safe condition, it is best to use within the time of eight hours a day and never try to sleep with contacts in eyes. As we know, contacts can prevent oxygen reaching from air to cornea, causing eye to increase blood flow through a proliferation of new blood vessels which are likely to induce vision block like cataracts. This process is called neovascularization whose symptom can seldom be recognized initially, so you are supposed to avoid using contacts in a long time to keep your eyes in a healthy state. Ophthalmologists suggest that long time wears should be at least twelve hours off every week.
The fact that everything has its both good side and bad side holds true to contacts, too. Proper use of contacts will of course give convenience to your life. However, if they are totally abused, contacts will act as a killer to your eyes, causing many terrible eye problems. Though our eyes have evolved to be largely self-protecting, we cannot neglect the eye protecting to reduce the possibility of eye damage, especially contacts because they contact to eyes directly.