so I admit it I messed up I slept in my
contact lenses but thankfully my eyes
turned out okay but I took some pictures
and I thought I'd share with you the
dangers of sleeping in contact lenses
when it's okay to sleep in them and
which lenses are approved by the FDA for
overnight wear let's take a look hello
and welcome this is dr. Allen here from
the doctor
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again I slept in my contact lenses the
other night and it was completely by
accident but still I feel bad because as
an eye care professional I feel like I
should be trying to lead by example and
yeah but I'm human and things happen but
when I woke up I felt something was
wrong and quickly just figured out what
had happened so I quick rushed to the
bathroom
took out the lenses and then grabbed my
camera to take some photos so I could
show you what it looked like so here is
what it looked like that morning you can
tell that my eyes were red and irritated
they even had a bunch of mucus
developing in the corners of the eyes
which was kind of a yellow-green mucus
my eyes felt sticky they certainly did
not I was seeing very well even putting
on my glasses I could tell that things
just weren't quite as crisp as they
usually were again thankfully I was not
in any pain because that would have been
a major indicator that something was
terribly wrong like I could have had a
serious eye infection which is one of
the main reasons why most eye doctors do
not recommend sleeping in contact lenses
your chance of developing infectious
keratitis getting a corneal infection is
four to five times greater for anybody
sleeping in lenses versus somebody who
just wears contact lenses during the day
only and I can tell you that the types
of infection you get from sleeping in
contact lenses are some of the nastiest
worst types of infections you can get on
the eye in fact there's a nasty bug
called Pseudomonas that you can get from
contact lenses and that can eat through
your cornea within 24 hours leaving your
whole eye just open to the
environment yeah it's nasty but
infection is not the only risk or
complication from sleeping in contacts
there are many other problems of course
there's dryness and irritation but also
a condition called just general
keratitis which is swelling or edema of
the cornea caused by hypoxia or lack of
oxygen getting to the cornea which
usually results in irritation and
blurred vision along with other
inflammatory complications now hopefully
I didn't scare you too much with those
pictures and descriptions but I just
wanted to stress the reason why most eye
doctors don't recommend sleeping in
contacts however there are some
conditions or scenarios where eye
doctors will prescribe overnight contact
lens wear for specific reasons one of
those reasons could be because you have
scratched your cornea sometimes when
people scratch the cornea their eyelid
keeps coming down and rubbing on their
eye making things feel much of worse and
it's hard for them to sleep or really
function so we can put a bandage contact
lens on the eye and that'll help prevent
the eyelid from rubbing on that cornea
causing that pain it gives me a real
help for some people or sometimes we put
them on after some sort of eye surgery
such as having PRK a type of lasik type
surgery and they did a video going over
lasik versus PRK if you want to check
that out I will hook up a link in the
video description below for you but the
bandage contact lens in that scenario
again helps cover the eye because it's a
similar type of thing there's a scratch
on the cornea and we want to protect to
the cornea with that bandaged lens
however during those scenarios we also
prescribed antibiotic eyedrops to help
prevent possible infection with the
contact lens wear and usually the
patient is following up with an eye care
provider pretty frequently
now some people can be prescribed
contact lenses for sleeping in there are
lenses that have been approved by the US
FDA the Food and Drug Administration for
overnight wear or what's called extended
wear contacts that's the proper term
that we use in the eye clinic the few
lenses that are approved by the FDA are
approved because they have higher oxygen
transmissibility we denote that as DK /
t that's how much
oxygen from the air in our environment
is passing through that plastic of a
contact lens and getting to the surface
of your eye because your cornea of your
eye does breathe oxygen and when you're
sleeping at night even when you're not
wearing contact lenses your eyelids
close and that prevents further oxygen
from getting to the cornea in fact most
people's corneas swell about 4% again
that's without wearing contacts just any
normal sleeping you get a 4% swelling of
your cornea but if you are room the
contact lens that's gonna further
decrease the amount of oxygen getting to
the surface and that causes things to be
much worse not to mention the moist
environment and increased amount of heat
from the closed eyelid which happens to
be the perfect breeding ground for
bacteria now for some people's lifestyle
sleeping in contact lenses is an amazing
option
and yes I doctors do prescribe contact
lenses for sleeping in but they have to
prescribe one of these lenses that are
FDA approved for extended wear now
before we go over some of the lenses
that are approved for overnight wear go
ahead and leave a comment below if you
have ever accidentally slept in your
contacts have do sleep in your contacts
overnight regularly what has been your
experience I'd like to know case you're
curious I'm just gonna list off the
three contact lenses that I often
prescribe the most often for any sort of
extended wear the first one is going to
be the Cooper vision bio Finity lens
this one does have a rather high oxygen
decay over t it's around a hundred and
sixty D K over T and this lens is
approved by the FDA for up to six nights
of extended wear wear other lenses such
as the Acuvue Oasis lens which has a DK
over T of I think about 120 then let's
just look this up here
okay 121 I was really close but those
Acuvue Oasis lenses are also approved
for up to six nights of extended wear
and then there's the air optics night
and day lens which has one of the
highest if not the highest DK over t
right now which is around a hundred and
seventy four DK over t but that lens is
actually approved for up to 30 nights of
extended wear yeah
that's 30 nights of sleeping in the same
contact lens now the big disclaimer here
is that I am NOT telling you that if you
already wear one of these lenses that
you can go out and start sleeping in
these lenses that's not how they are
prescribed not everybody does well with
sleeping in their lenses in fact eye
doctors are supposed to prescribe or
recommend hey if you want to sleep in
your lens we need to kind of gradually
taper you into it and make sure and
verify that it is something for you it
seems like some people do just fine
sleeping in their lenses while other
people even just one night causes
terrible consequences there definitely
seems to be some level of tolerance that
some people can seem to sleep in lenses
easier versus others if your eye doctor
did not prescribe you contact lenses
specifically for extended wear then I do
not recommend sleeping in contact lenses
even in those scenarios where I do
prescribe it for somebody I give them
about a hundred different like just hey
your chance of infection is super high
you need to give us a call immediately
if you're having any problems at all
take out your lenses and give us a call
right away so if you do sleep in your
contact lenses or really any time you
were in contact if you do develop any
redness pain any problems take out your
lenses right away and give your local
eye doctor a call so they can help you
out remember that you only get two eyes
so please take care of them if you liked
this video and you learned something to
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you'd like to learn more about which
contact lenses on my favorite for things
like dry eyes or if you're trying to
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then check out my full video series
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