Hi everyone! You may have come from our other video teaching you 3 different ways on inserting
your contact lenses. Now that you’ve mastered that or on the way to becoming pro at it, you’re gonna
eventually need to take them out. And so we’re going to show you 3 different ways of doing this.
For myself I’m right handed and so I will be showing the right handers how to do it,
while Andy here is left handed and he’ll help all of our left handed viewers.
Now, in our other video we also went through a few things you should prepare before you even start.
If you’ve already seen that, feel free to jump ahead to the section where we
start the tutorial, we’ll leave a time stamp in the description box.
First, find a spot in your house that gives you access to a mirror and ideally some countertop
space so that if you do drop your lenses it’s not going to drop on to the floor.
Your bathroom should be the ideal spot because it also gives you access to a
sink to wash your hands and contact lens case. It might be a good idea to also plug that sink,
in the off chance your lens falls into the basin, and down your drain and into the ocean.
For today though I’ll be doing it here since it’s easier to show you.
If you have long fingernails it may be more difficult to insert and remove lenses,
so consider cutting them shorter. I always suggest new contact lens wearers to have short
nails so that they don’t end up accidentally poking their eye when putting them in.
As always we need to make sure that your hands are thoroughly washed with soap and water,
then, dried with a lint-free towel. This is so you don’t get any fluff stuck on them, because
the fluff can be transferred from your hands to your lens to your eye, which can be uncomfortable.
If you wear make up, remove your contact lenses before removing your make-up.
If you keep your contacts in, the makeup remover and makeup debris can get
into the eyes and stick to the contact lens surface and cause discomfort,
this is especially important if you are wearing fortnightly or monthly disposable contact lenses
since you are reusing the same lens for a period of time.
Now that we have that out of the way. Let’s teach you how to remove your contact lenses.
The most important thing is to have dry fingers. Now I can’t emphasize this enough as it helps your
fingers grip onto your contact lens. Always insert and remove the same eye first so you get into
the habit of that which reduces the likelihood of putting the incorrect lens power in the wrong eye.
Now angle your head towards the ear that’s on the same side as the lens you’re taking out
and direct your gaze towards your nose looking at your eyes in the mirror.
Remember, I’m a right hander. You’re going to lift your upper eyelid with the middle finger
of your non-dominant hand, which is my left hand, and use the middle finger of your dominant hand,
which is my right hand, to pull down the lower eyelid. This step is exactly the same as when
you were putting your lenses in. We want to get those eyelids as far apart as possible.
Now using the padded part of your index finger or pointer finger, touch the coloured part of
your eye where the contact lens is, now drag the lens towards the white part of your eyes,
and bring your thumb in to touch the lens and pinch it off your eye. I like to angle my fingers
so that I’m not using the tip of my finger or thumb, just the padded part of my fingers.
Also try and have your thumb as close to your eye as possible, rather than having it far out here,
so it’s a much swifter movement to get your thumb in to pinch the lens off.
Don’t worry you’re not going to hurt your eyes, you’ll only be touching the lens.
Let’s show that again smoothly in real time. Lift the top lid,
lower bottom lid, touch contact lens and drag and pinch.
Let me show you that again for the left handed people, for right handed people you can also use
me as a mirror image. Angle your head towards your ears, look at yourself in the mirror towards your
nose, lift the top eyelid with the middle finger of your non-dominant hand, which is my right hand,
then lower the bottom eyelid with the middle finger of my left dominant hand,
then bring your index finger to touch the contact lens, drag to the side and pinch it off.
If you’re struggling with this method you can try the second technique.
Instead of dragging the lens to the side you drag the lens down and pinch it off. You angle your head
down, your eyes looking at yourself in the mirror, touch the lens, drag it down and pinch off.
So the third method is directly pinching the lens off your eyes like so…
I know that I said I’d teach you 3 methods, but lucky for you there is a bonus one. This fourth
method is great for people who have large fingers and find it difficult to get their fingers in
to pinch the lens off. Using your index finger, touch the lens with your finger and drag it
towards your nose like so and push it out. Avoid touching your eye with your finger nails.
Some people find it difficult to know if their lenses are out or not. If the lens is still in,
you might be able to see a bit of a bluish ring around your eyes. If you can’t see it don’t worry,
what you can do is take a few good blinks. This helps to centre the lens if it’s still in your
eye, now cover the other eye and look out in the distance to see if your vision is clear.
If it is still clear then the lens is still in there, if it’s blurry then it’s out.
If your prescription isn’t that strong, you might not notice a difference if you’re just looking
around in a small bathroom, so try and look at something as far out in the distance as you can.
If you continue to have trouble with putting your lenses in or taking them out, as mentioned before,
the best way to learn is to have an eyecare professional guiding you in real time so that they
can advise you on how to improve your technique because a lot of the time patients understand
all the theory of how to do it but it just doesn’t translate well when they try to do it themselves.
Always remember if at any point you experience persistent pain, redness, discomfort or discharge,
stop wearing your contact lenses and see your eyecare provider as soon as possible.
So we hope you enjoyed this video. If you want to learn about some good contact lens
habits you should be doing to help make sure your eyes stay healthy,
click this video. If you found this video helpful give us a thumbs up
and let us know if you were successful in taking your contact lenses out. Thanks for watching, bye!