Keeping Your Contacts Clean…A Must Do!

clean contact lensesI’ll be honest. Sometimes I get a little too casual with my contacts.  I stick my finger in my eye and then think, “Woops, I should have washed my hands better….”  Or, (worse) I’m in a hurry, rushing to get out the door and I drop one. A quick squirt of saline and it’s in.  But, did I clean it well enough? Probably not.

So why should you care about cleaning your contacts? I’ll give you one word: bacteria.  Yes, for the same reason you wouldn’t want to eat food that was dropped on the floor, you really don’t want any of those little sickness-causing critters getting into your body…and especially not into your eyes.

I recently read an article about a very rare amoeba that makes its way into your eyes and can cause some serious issues.  Though it’s extremely rare, the most interesting thing in this article was a quote from an optometrist who said that in almost all of the 75 reported cases a year he believed that contracting the germ was completely avoidable.

In fact, you can almost completely eliminate the chance of ever getting a dangerous amoeba or any other bacteria in your eyes just by taking good care of your lenses and by following some pretty simple, basic, cleaning hygiene routines when putting in and taking out your contact lenses.

So, what can you do to keep the germs away?  Well, I asked my eye doctor and his recommendation can be summed up in three words: keep it clean.

Here are a few tips:

Hands

Wash your hands thoroughly with soapy water before you touch your lenses.

Contact Lens Solution

Never use saline or water to clean your lenses, and never reuse contact lens solution.  Use a disinfecting product regularly to make sure your contact lenses get clean.  If you drop your lenses into a dirty sink or floor, consider disinfecting them overnight as the safest way to make sure they are clean before going back in your eye.  If you can’t do that, then use a lot of saline solution and really try to get the “yuck” off.

Wetting Solutions

Never use saliva to moisten your lenses.  My doctor actually told me it’d be cleaner to pee on them then to spit on them (Gross!).  Visine or eye drops are a great lens-wetting alternative if you are stuck without saline.  Bottled or other purified water is an okay second choice, and the final, not horrible but not great choice would be tap water.

Know When To Leave Them Out

Finally, when in doubt, leave them out.  Don’t swim in murky water with your lenses in and if at anytime you find them irritating your eyes, consider sporting some stylish glasses that day.

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