According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 45 million Americans wear contact lenses, but most of these wearers do not practice correct contact lens hygiene.
To support Contact Lens Health week, we’re providing you with tips on contact lens practices to protect against serious eye infections.
Wash Your Hands
Always wash your hands with soap and water, then dry them with a clean cloth before inserting or removing contact lenses. This is important to help prevent bacteria and irritants from getting on the lens.
Keep Lens Away from All Water
Remove your contacts before showering and swimming. Exposing contact lenses to water may increase the risk of a severe eye infection. Contact lens absorb anything they come into contact with, so any type of water (e.g., tap water, swimming pools, oceans, lakes, hot tubs, showers) can transmit harmful microbes to your contacts.
Clean Your Contact Lens Properly
Rubbing contact lenses with a clean finger followed by rinsing and soaking them in disinfecting solution overnight is the most effective way to clean contact lenses. Use only fresh solution when rinsing and storing contacts to help prevent infections. Mixing fresh solution with used solution decreases the effectiveness of the cleaning solution.
Keep Your Contact Case Clean
The American Optometric Association suggests cleaning your contact case every day and buying a new case every three months. Cleaning your contact case daily means discarding the old solution, rinsing the case with new solution, and leaving the case open to dry. Your contact case can serve as a breeding ground for bacteria if not cleaned properly.
Don’t Sleep in Your Contacts
Sleeping with contact lenses in can lead to eye infection, irritation, or damage. When you sleep with your contacts in, your eyes cannot get enough oxygen and hydration they need to fight infection. Furthermore, sleeping in any type of contact lens increases the risk of getting a serious corneal infection 6-8 times.
Visit Your Eye Doctor Yearly
Contact lenses increases the risk for eye infections and complications so yearly eye exams are recommended for contact lens wearers to keep their eyes as healthy as possible. Also, contact lens wearers will need to have regular eye exams to update their prescription.
Curious why we recommend these tips? Read more at https://www.cdc.gov/contactlenses/show-me-the-science.html for the data behind these recommendations.
