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For many people, contact lenses mean more visual freedom to live an active and dynamic lifestyle.
Contact lenses are high-tech medical devices, and your vision is one of your most valued senses. As such, it’s important to make good choices for the health and comfort of your eyes. Here are some handy tips designed to put you on the path to a lifetime of success with your new contact lenses:
1.Relax
It is perfectly normal to be a little nervous when you’re trying something new for the first time. Many people fear that they are going to scratch their eye or break the lens when putting in contacts for the first time, but there will be absolutely nothing to worry about if you simply relax into it and trust yourself.
At Bayside Eyecare, our optometrists take the time to ensure you are putting them in and taking them out correctly before sending you home. Our professional team will only send you home with your contact lenses once we feel that you are competent enough to master the insertion and removal of lenses without supervision.
If you drop the lens, simply pick it up and give it a gentle wash with your prescribed contact lens multipurpose solution to ensure there aren’t any dust particles or bits of dirt on the lens and try again. Remember to keep your hands clean, breathe, and stay calm.
2. Keep lenses clean
For monthly and 2-week contact lenses, make sure you are doing everything you can to maintain the specific lens care regime that has been chosen for you by your optometrist. For example, if you are told to use a multipurpose solution every time you remove your lenses, you should rub and rinse and then place them into a fresh solution after each use. It’s important that you don’t just top off the solution that’s already in the case.
When you put your lenses on in the morning, empty the case, rinse with fresh solution and leave it uncapped and upside down on a paper towel to air dry. Your lens case should be replaced every months.
3. Follow your optometrist’s recommendations
Use only the products that have been recommended to you by your optometrist. The solution that you have been prescribed is specific for your type of lens, so don’t substitute any lens care products without checking with your optometrist first.
It is also very important to attend any follow-up appointments to ensure that your eyes are adjusting well to your contact lenses. Similarly, it’s important to make sure that you only wear your contact lenses for the amount of time that your optometrist has said is safe. This means replacing the lenses according to your specific schedule and not attempting to stretch out the life of your lenses an extra few days or weeks. Additionally, unless you are specifically prescribed continuous wear lenses, you should never sleep in your contact lenses.
It may take a bit of time for contact lens wear and care to become a natural routine in your life. If you adhere to what has been outlined above, you should be on the path to becoming a successful contact lens wearer in no time.
Is reading causing eye strain?
As you get older, it is natural to notice changes in your vision. One of the most common changes for older adults is losing the ability to see up close. If you’ve been struggling to read the menu or have noticed that it’s harder to read in dim lighting, this may be a sign that your eyes are changing, and you need to book yourself in for a check-up.
Sustained hours spent reading can have a significant effect on how your eyes feel, particularly when the work is performed on a computer or other digital device. If you’ve been spending long hours reading and are experiencing symptoms such as eye strain, headaches, blurred vision, dry eyes, and neck and shoulder pain, you may have eye fatigue.
Fortunately, visual fatigue doesn’t have to get in the way of you and your reading. There are a number of strategies that can assist in easing your visual discomfort, including but not limited to:
- The 20/20/20 rule: take a 20-second break every 20 minutes and focus your eyes on something else that is 20 feet away.
- Blink: make a conscious effort to blink more often when using your digital devices.
- Get moving: frequent breaks from working on digital devices can give your eyes a rest. If you were going for a long drive, typically every hour or so you would stop, stretch, and take a break. Similarly, if you’ve been reading for a while and concentrating, your eye muscles get fatigued and need to have breaks.
- Adjust the lighting: position your computer screen, book or newspaper away from fluorescent lights and consider floor lamps instead of overhead lighting.
If you think you may need glasses or would like to make the transition to contact lenses, our team at Bayside Eyecare is here to help. Give our highly trained and friendly team a call today on (03) 9909 5329 or book an appointment online.