14 Biggest Blunders to avoid while With Your Contact Lenses

How many people do you think wear contact lenses in the United States? Ten million? Twenty million? There are around 45 million contact wearers in the U.S. alone. However, 40% to 90% of people who wear contacts don’t take care of them correctly, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This includes not only properly using the lens solution recommended by a health care professional, but also other basic dos and don’ts when it comes to contact lenses.

Admittedly, this might not sound like a terrible thing. After all, sometimes you have to cut corners when it comes to your daily routines. But make no mistake, not properly caring for your contacts could put your vision at risk. Each year as many as one out of every 500 people who wear contacts develop infections in their eyes that have the potential to leave them blind, notes the CDC.

So, does that mean proper contact lens maintenance will guarantee you will never get an eye infection? Obviously, that’s a promise no one can make since many factors impact whether or not you develop an infection anywhere in your body. However, avoiding certain common mistakes will greatly reduce the chances of experiencing eye issues related to your contacts — and in the process help safeguard your vision.

(1) Wearing contact lenses when you’re sick

You wake up and immediately feel under the weather. Hoping you’re just a little groggy, you put in your contact lenses and try to have a normal day. Unfortunately, you only feel worse in the days that follow, but you try to fight through it by forcing yourself to get out of bed, get dressed, and put in your contact lenses. Has this ever happened to you?

First, while it’s understandable to push through sickness, your body often needs rest to recover. But second, reapplying contact lenses while you’re ill can make your situation worse. “In the presence of an infection, the continued handling and use of contact lenses may spread the infection to the eye, and in the presence of contact lenses, the infection poses a greater risk to the health of the eye,” Dr. Howard R. Krauss, a surgical neuro-ophthalmologist, told AccuWeather. In fact, the virus that often causes conjunctivitis (pink eye) is the same viral invader responsible for the flu and the common cold (via Diamond Vision).

Even if you don’t feel physically ill, Dr. Krauss cautions that your tears and the natural mucus in your eyes can still be infected with viruses. So, if you even suspect you’re coming down with something, avoid wearing your contact lenses. And if you develop pink eye while your contact lenses are in your eyes, then throw out those lenses and their storage case to avoid reinfection (via Diamond Vision).

(2) Storing contacts in the bathroom