How to deal with contact lenses discomfort

If you experience any of these symptoms, stop lens wear immediately and consult your eye care professional. These could be signs of a serious problem. Contact lenses can’t be comfortable if your eyes aren’t healthy to begin with, and continued contact Len.

This shouldn’t happen, and often when it does, it’s because you are unintentionally contaminating your lenses.

Contact lenses retain substances they come into contact with, such as skin lotions, soaps with moisturizers and perfumes, food oils and cosmetics.

These substances can create a burning sensation if they contact your eyes. Therefore, it’s important to thoroughly clean your hands before touching your contact lenses or your eyes.

Use soaps that are free of moisturizers and perfumes. Ivory, Dial Basic and Dial Pure & Natural are brands that are sometimes recommended by eye care professionals. Wash your hands thoroughly and dry them with a lint-free cloth before handling your contacts.

Also, consider trying daily disposable contacts. Because you discard these lenses after a single use, there is less risk of them becoming contaminated.

If your diet includes a lot of caffeine or alcohol or you don’t drink enough water, your eyes may be too dry for contact lens wear. Dry eyes also may cause other problems, such as eye twitching.

Changing your diet can help, and your doctor may recommend flax seed oil or other nutritional supplements to improve the quality of your tears.

If you smoke, you are at increased risk for dry eye syndrome, as well as other problems such as macular degeneration.

Medications can cause dry eyes, especially antihistamines or medicines used to control blood pressure.

If it’s a short-term situation, consider using eye drops or temporarily discontinuing contact lens wear.

If your dry eyes are caused by medications you’ll be taking on an ongoing basis, your doctor may recommend flaxseed oil or other eye supplements, punctual occlusion, or changing your contact lenses.

Contact lenses are not one-size-fits-all, and constant “lens awareness” could indicate a poorly fitting lens.

Lenses come in many combinations of diameter and curvature. If your lenses have the wrong diameter or base curve, you’ll likely feel that something is always in your eye.

If the lenses are too flat, your eyelids will tend to dislodge them when you blink. The wrong size lenses can even cause an abrasion of your cornea. This is one reason why swapping colored contact lenses with friends is a bad idea.

Lens awareness also can result from lenses that have lipid or protein deposits on them. Lens deposits accumulate on contact lenses over time, even if you properly clean and care for your lenses.

Your doctor might recommend a change in contact lens solutions, or a switch to daily disposable lenses. It’s also possible that a lens material or cleaning solution can be incompatible with your eyes or tears.

If your dryness symptoms are only occasional, your best remedy might be over-the-counter eye drops.

All drops and lenses are not compatible; be sure to follow your doctor’s recommendations.

If the frequency of dryness is more than occasional, your eye doctor might recommend different contact lenses that are better suited to people with dry eyes.

End-of-day discomfort has long been a challenge for contact lens wearers. A real breakthrough in this area is silicone hydrogel lenses. These new-generation soft contacts transmit greater amounts of oxygen to the eye than traditional lenses, and some silicone hydrogels are less prone to dehydration.

Another strategy to combat contact lens-related dry eye is switching to a soft contact lens that has a lower water content than your present lens. High-water lenses sometimes dehydrate more easily in a dry environment, causing discomfort. Your eye doctor also may recommend a brand of soft lens designed specifically to reduce dry eye problems.

Changing from soft lenses to gas permeable contacts also may reduce dryness symptoms.

If you notice eye irritation while outside or around pets, you may have eye allergies. Also, if you have other allergies that you regularly treat, you may notice that your eyes get involved during peak periods such as pollen season.

This can be a twofold problem involving both your contact lenses and your eyes. Lenses may collect irritants, which then irritate your eyes. Keeping your lenses clean can help, which means possibly changing your contact lens solutions or switching to daily disposable contact lenses.

Your doctor may be able to relieve the itching associated with allergies that can lead to problems like eye twitching with either over-the-counter or prescription eye drops.

Some medical problems, such as allergies, Sjogren’s syndrome, thyroid conditions, hormonal changes brought on by menopause, and skin conditions such as acne rosacea, can cause vision problems or eye irritation, especially irritation from dryness.

Dry eyes are also a common side effect of many over-the-counter and prescription medications, such as antihistamines or blood pressure medications. Dry eye syndrome is a condition that can cause your eyes to feel gritty or appear red.

It’s extremely important that you follow your eye doctor’s cleaning and care instructions. Unclean lenses won’t be comfortable, and they can spawn other eye problems.

Often people who complain that their contact lenses are uncomfortable are either not cleaning them well enough or wearing them too long before cleaning or replacing them. For example, if you have contact lenses that should be thrown out after two weeks, don’t wear them any longer than that.

Proper daily lens care is important whether you wear regular contact lenses of color contacts for cosmetic purposes. To avoid lens care altogether, an option is daily disposable contact lenses.

Where you wear your lenses can be just as important as how long you wear them.

If you work in a dusty place, debris may get caught between your lens and your eye and cause discomfort, even if you can’t see it. Frequent application of lubricating or rewetting eye drops that are approved for use with contact lenses can help keep your eyes and lenses comfortable.

Another remedy is orthokeratology, which is the prescription, fitting and use of special contact lenses to reshape your cornea while you sleep, allowing lens-free daytime vision.