looking after your contact lenses

How important is the health of our eyes? This might well sound like a ridiculous question we are all fully aware of how critical our eyesight is. Of course you would never deliberately do anything to hurt your eyes but if you wear contact lenses you may not realise taking the correct care of your contact lenses has a major affect on your eyes.

So how do we comfortably use contact lenses and still make sure our eyes remain healthy?

Bacteria can easily get in to the eyes from contact lenses so washing and rinses your hands before handling your contact lenses is very important.

Your optometrist is the ideal person to inform you of the best contact lens cleaners and eye drops to use. It is important to read and use the instructions that you will get with your contact lenses, contact lenses cleaner and eye drops.

Take good care of your contact lens case. Many people don't realise it should be cleaned, rinsed, and dried each time you take out your contact lenses. It's also a good idea to replace the case every six months.

Check before buying eye makeup that it is contact lens friendly.

Be sure to remove your lenses and refer to an eye specialist as soon as possible if your vision changes, your eyes are red, your eyes are painful, you have excess tears or itchiness in your eyes.

Now that we have covered a lot of things that you should do to look after your contact lenses and eyes we will cover several things you should not do.

Avoid infections by never cleaning your contact lenses by spitting on them. Never store or rinse your lenses using home made salt water, tap water or bottled water.

When you use cleaning products take out your contact lenses, never use eyeliner on the inner part of your lower eyelid and lotions creams and sprays must not get on your contact lenses.

Never wear your contact lenses for longer than an optometrist has advised you to and if using daily wear lenses make sure you don't go to sleep with them in even for a small length of time.

So what type of contact lens do you have? And what are available. Following is a brief description of the length of time each contact lens can be worn and when they need to be cleaned.

Disposable contact lenses as the name implies are lenses that you throw away. They are worn for one day and so don't need cleaning instead you use new lenses each day.

Extended wear contact lenses are worn continuously (even during sleep) for anything up until thirty days. They need to be removed and cleaned each thirty days.

Extended wear contact lenses can be left in for up to thirty days, even while sleeping. After 30 days they need to be removed and cleaned.

Linda is webmaster of Vision Care 4 All. For all your vision care needs from contact lenses to sunglasses. We also have a range of href="http://www.visioncare4all.com/Vision-Care/Contact-Lens-Accessories">contact lens accessories. Check our prices!