Most people are generally concerned with their health and take steps to ensure they are physically well. Not everyone remembers the health of their eyes though. Those that wear contact lenses or glasses must take extra care to maintain their eye health. This article discusses how to maintain your eye health as a contact lens or glasses wearer.
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Maintaining contact lenses
If you are a two weekly, monthly or yearly contact lens user, you will need a simple lens cleaning routine to ensure your lenses and your eyes are in optimal condition. This will involve removing your lenses each evening before you go to sleep, cleaning the lens with an appropriate contact lens solution and then storing the lenses in a clean contact lens case filled with fresh solution. Old solution should never be used to store your lenses. Doing so can introduce bacteria and put your eyes at risk of developing diseases.
Daily contact lenses
If you are a daily contact lens user, you won’t need a lens cleaning routine. Daily disposable contact lenses are the most convenient of all as they can be worn for a full day before being disposed of before you go to sleep. Although you don’t require a lens cleaning routine for dailies, you must still remember these tips for maintaining your eye health:
- Only handle your contact lenses with clean and dry hands
- If your eyes feel incredibly dry or irritated, remove your lenses
- Keep water out of your eyes while wearing lenses
- Never sleep in your daily disposable lenses
- Don’t wear your lenses for longer than a day
- Put your lenses in before applying make-up and remove them before taking make-up off
- Keep creams and lotions away from your eyes/lenses
- Visit your optician at least every 2 years
How to maintain your eyes with glasses
Just like contact lenses, glasses also need to be kept clean, not just so you can see clearly through the lenses, but also because you don’t want to spread dirt and bacteria from your glasses to your eyes. It’s useful to carry a small bottle of lens cleaning solution and a microfibre cloth, this will allow you to clean on the go. Along with keeping the frame and the lenses of your glasses clean, here are some other things you can do to maintain your eye health while wearing glasses:
- Eat a diet rich in vitamin C, oily fish and dark leafy greens
- Wear glasses with impact-resistant lenses
- When using machinery like power drills, always wear protective goggles over your glasses
- Ensure your lenses have UV protection
- Visit your optician at least every 2 years
Glasses and UV light
Whether you require visual correction or not, everybody should protect their eyes from UV light. Even when it’s cloudy outside, UV light can penetrate cloud! That’s why protecting your eyes all year round is so important. Usually, standard lenses would come with 80% UV protection, but this can be upgraded to 100% with different lens packages. There’s also the option of adding Transitions lenses to your glasses, which would give you the best of both worlds, the glasses would remain clear when inside and as soon as you’re outside/exposed to UV light, the lenses will darken. For very sunny conditions, prescription sunglasses is recommended.
Contact lenses and UV light
Although some contact lenses do provide some UV protection, as lenses are only covering a small portion of your eye (the cornea) it’s important to also wear sunglasses with your contact lenses to ensure complete coverage and protection of the entire eye area. Ensure your sunglasses are large enough to cover the eye area, as faces come in all shapes and sizes; some may be able to get away with smaller lenses, while others will need a larger lens. Wrap-around frames provide the best protection because they curve to fit the natural shape of your face, protecting the eyes from all angles.
Order contact lenses onlineYou don’t have to rely on your optician for your lenses, order contact lenses online for the lowest price. Online retailers have the benefit of not having to pay overheads, which allows them to pass that saving onto the consumer, saving your money. Glasses are also often cheaper to buy online, all you need to do is enter your prescription, choose your preferred lens package, enter your payment details and press confirm, it couldn’t be more simple.
