Joel Hayden: I'm going to tell
you the five things that you do not want to do with contact lenses. Stick around.
All right, friends. Today we're going to talk about the
five things you shouldn't do with contact lenses. And in the meantime, if you like what
I have to say, please hit that like button, please consider subscribing and here we go.
All right, guys. So we're going to talk about things you should not do with contact lenses.
The first one comes from a viewer who is named Richard from Nadick, Massachusetts. And Richard
asks, "Dr. Hayden, I was driving down the road with my wife the other day
when she reached into my side pocket, grabbed the water bottle that I had drank in the previous week
and continued to open it up and pour a small drop into each eye to lubricate her eyes.
Do you think this is a good idea?" Well, Richard, no. No, that's not a
good idea at all. That's an awful idea. That is a recipe for disaster. So one of the things that
you should know is bottled water has 10 times as many bacteria than tap water, one. Number two,
you had drank out of it. So now bacteria that was in your mouth is in the bottle. Which isn't
a big deal if you're going to drink it. But if someone else is going to put it in their eye,
where those bacteria could get into the contact lenses and potentially into the cornea, that not
only could be an issue with conjunctivitis, but it could potentially be a corneal ulcer. So there's
many things that can live in water that should not be in contact lenses, which is why you should
never, ever, ever use tap water to rinse your eyes or your contact lenses. Please tell your wife.
Number two, this one's going to seem pretty obvious to most people, except for those people
that do this. I find that it's more prevalent in people who wear gas perm or harder contact lenses
than soft, but many times their eyes get dry and irritated and they take their contact lenses out
and they actually put them in their mouth and think they're lubricating them. And again, they're
introducing that whole host of bacteria to the lens and then they're putting it right back in.
Not a good idea. So, if you're one of those few people out there that do that, don't.
Number three, don't store them in anything other than solution meant for contact lenses.
And I'm talking the brand names, obviously, the Renew, the BioTrue, the OptiFree
and Clear Care. Clear Care is a whole different system that you want to
make sure you're familiar with before you start putting contacts into that solution.
But it happens all the time. I had an optometrist, a classmate of mine call me one time and say,
"My daughter has [inaudible] dilated. She was at a friend's house last night and didn't have
contact lens solution so she stored them in something other than that." And I said,
"It was probably like a Visine. Because Visine in a contact lens, given to your eye over
time can dilate your pupil." And these are the reasons why you want to make sure that you are
putting them in solution only for contact lenses. The other issue is, especially with college age
kids, you never know where they're going to end up at night and you never know where they're
going to end up at night and if they're going to keep their contacts in all night or if they're
going to store them in something they shouldn't be stored in. Which is a really good reason to have
your college age students in daily disposables. So that's another thing to consider.
Which takes me to number four with your college age students, do not sleep in your contacts.
Sleeping in your contacts can cause irritation to the eye, which in turn, gives the bacteria
in your tears a way to get into the cornea and potentially cause an ulcer and loss of sight.
So sleeping in your contacts is definitely not something you should do.
All right, number five. Do not rub your eyes with your contacts in. You shouldn't
rub your eyes excessively either with them in or out, but people will wear their contacts,
their eyes seem itchy and they rub their eyes like crazy. I mean I have patients, they go knuckles in
and they rub them really hard. And you can do damage to your cornea. Many people who have a
disease called keratoconus, if you want to know what that is, here's the video,
they get keratoconus from rubbing their eyes. And usually all I have to do is ask. I see an increase
in astigmatism in the prescription and I'll say, "Hey, do you rub your eyes?" And they're like,
"Yeah, I rub my eyes a lot. And really hard." And it's because they itch.
Well, here's a tip. Don't rub your eyes. If your eyes itch that bad with the contacts, A,
go see your eye doctor and get fit with a lens that doesn't itch so bad. Or use something like
Zaditor or Pataday, which is meant to decrease the itching and talk to your doctor about how you
should put those drops in around your contacts. So there it is, guys, the five biggest things you
shouldn't do when wearing contact lenses. Hope this helped and until next time, take care.