In this video, I'm going to show you how to take out contact lenses. Plus I'll even
show you how to take out the contact lens that gets stuck in the eye. Let's
take a look. Hello and welcome! I am Doctor Joseph Allen here from "Doctor Eye
Health," the channel that helps you learn about the eyes, vision,
and finding the best vision product, so
if you're new here to the channel, consider subscribing and hitting that
notification bell so that you don't miss any of my future videos. So knowing
how to take off a contact lens is a really important skill to have for
anybody who's wearing contact lenses basically because if you have contact
lens on the eye and something seems to be going wrong, like maybe an infection,
you want to take that thing out right away, but honestly sometimes taking your
contacts out can be a challenge even for a veteran like myself, and I've been
wearing contact lenses since I was 13 years old. Sometimes it seems like those
lenses just seem to slip away and even sometimes the lenses do get stuck
underneath the eyelid, but rest assured the lens cannot go behind the eye.
Physiologically, it's impossible. Now the first thing whenever you're gonna touch
or handle contact lenses, make sure you wash your hands. I know you're taking the
lenses out, but still you want to wash your hands get any sort of bacteria or
debris off of your hands because you are going to be touching the contact lenses
on your eye, and if you miss once or twice that could end up getting in the
eye, and yeah, you just don't want that. Once you've done washing your hands, you
need to dry your hands and dry them very well. This is going to be key! You want
your hands to be bone-dry, not a little bit slippery. If it's bone-dry, you'll
actually be able to grip the contact lens, otherwise it's just going to slide
around, and you won't really have much of a chance. Now the next big step is being
able to control your eyelids. I personally like to use my non-dominant
hand to hold the upper eyelid with my middle finger, and then I actually use
the middle finger of my dominant hand to hold the lower eyelid that allows me to
really grip and hold things open so that don't just instinctively kind of react
and close my eye. That also leaves my pointer finger and my thumb free so I
can actually grip the lens. You actually want to hold the pads of your fingers
together and make kind of like this little kissing tweezer motion. That's
actually the part of your fingers that you're going to touch the contact lenses
with, and then just because your fingers are so dry ,when you make that little
kissing tweezer motion, you'll actually grab onto the lens and you can easily
lift it off the eye. Now when I'm prepared to take out my contact lenses, you can do
it looking straight ahead into something like a mirror. I personally look upward
just a little bit just because when you're gripping the contact lens, you can
go straight on if you want, but I prefer to grab the lower 1/3 or 1/2 of the lens
because it just tends to kind of flute and grab on a little bit better. One more
time you hold the upper eyelid hold the lower eyelid I look slightly up, and then
you go ahead and just pinch and the lens comes right off. Yeah I know I made that
look easy. Otherwise let me show you this method one more time, and then I'm gonna
actually show you another method of how to remove these contacts, but first I got
to put this lens back in. All right there we go. Contact lens back in eye. Again I
want to show you this. I'm gonna hold my upper eyelid, then I'm gonna hold the
lower eyelid use my little kissing fingers here, touching the lower 1/3,
gripping, and removing. I'm just gonna put this back in alright. Now the next
method some people prefer mainly because they don't like actually seeing anything
come toward their eye so the method is actually taking the contact lens and
dragging it over to the white part of the eye onto the sclera and then they
actually still use the same little pinching motion to grab the contact lens
and lift it off so I'm gonna try and do this it's not the method that I prefer
but again basically you kind of look away from your fingers you drag the lens
I got it out but it fell that's ok if your lens does fall out you're just
gonna have to rinse it and clean it. now every once in a while even the contact
lens veteran will have this issue where the contact lens could perhaps slide and
get stuck underneath your upper eyelid and no it does not feel very good you
probably know exactly what I'm talking about but usually when this happens the
best way to do it is honestly just to look straight down and keep blinking
your eye keep blinking keep blinking oftentimes that process the lid will
grab the lens and slide it down back toward the front of your eye
sometimes the lens will find itself right in the position right on your
cornea where it needs to be sometimes the lens will fold on it
and it'll just fall out of the eye another method though is that if you
really having a hard time just look down you can sometimes kind of feel it and
then you just have to kind of push on your eyelid with your finger and kind of
encourage the lens to kind of move itself down another method is that look
in the mirror try to see if you can figure out where it's at or if maybe one
of your friends can actually take a look at it and if they can point out where
it's actually stuck that way you know exactly where to touch on the eyelid and
kind of encourage it downward I don't recommend using a q-tip or anything else
to try and fishing it out of the eye that's something that is best left for a
professional to do because you could end up scratching your eye if you do get
your lens stuck in the eye and you cannot get it out then make sure you
contact your local eye care professional because we can actually see you we can
have you in the exam room I can actually put some type of yellow dye on the eye
that we call fluorescence sodium this yellow dye actually gets absorbed into
the contact lens and makes it highlight bright yellow under a blue filter and
that way we can tell exactly where that contact lens is we can see if you have
any sort of scratches or any sort of abrasion on the surface of the eye and
then we can treat it accordingly. now a couple of safety tips for contact lenses
is that these lenses are actually a medical device and anytime you feel like
your eyes are red scratchy yet you're painful or that your
vision starts to get blurry please take them out and if your vision or your eyes
not getting better call your eye doctor right away please remember you only get
two eyes so please take care of them hopefully you found this video helpful
and you're able to get your contact lenses out on your own if you continue
to have any difficulties removing contact lenses it is best not to sleep
in them unless they are designed for sleeping in otherwise contact your local
eye care professionals so they can help you remove it I have a question of the
day which was your favorite part about this video did you find it helpful and
you have any extra pro tips about removing contact lenses yourself go
ahead and comment in the section below I'd love to hear from you if you found
this video helpful give it a thumbs up and if you're somebody who's not wearing
daily one-time-use lenses and you've just thrown it away then you probably
need to clean your contact lens so I have another video showing you how to
clean contact lenses and how to clean the contact lens case and if you'd like
to see that go ahead and click or tap the screen up here to decide or if you'd
like to see another cool video from dr. eye health go ahead and click or tap the
screen down over again this is dr. Joseph Allen here from
doctor eye health the channel helps you learn about the eyes, vision and finding
the best vision products. keep an eye on it
we'll talk to you soon