Are Non-Prescription Contacts Safe to Wear?.
Roughly 45 million people in the United States wear contact lenses on a regular basis.
Contact lenses are medical devices that most people use to correct their vision. Truthfully, however, contact lenses can also be used to change the way that your eye looks even if your vision is perfect.
Colored contacts are a great thing for people to use if they want to change the way that their eyes look. It can impact the entire appearance of your face.
If you are interested in how safe colored contacts are and whether or not you may want to try them, keep reading to learn more.
What Are Contact Lenses?
Contact lenses are little plastic discs that sit on your cornea. Regular contact lenses are transparent and correct refractive errors like myopia or hyperopia.
With these conditions, the eye doesn’t focus the light on the retina like it is supposed to and this leads to your blurry vision. Contact lenses, like glasses, help to correct these issues so that your vision becomes clear again.
Contact lenses are shaped based on the type of problem that is being corrected in order to make sure the light focuses on where it needs to in the eye.
When a person wears contact lenses, the lenses physically touch the eye, so they are obviously closer to your natural sight than when you wear glasses. The lenses move with your eye and are closer to the problem in your vision, making your field of vision more natural.
In other words, contact lenses won’t get into your line of sight as eyeglasses can.
Contact lenses can be worn all day or for longer periods of time, depending on the type of lenses you have.
The way that contact lenses stay in place in the eye is by sticking to the layer of the tear fluid on the surface.
This tear fluid floats on your eye at all times and the pressure of your eyelids helps to make the contact lens “stick to it” with lubrication. When you blink, you are providing lubrication and flushing away the impurities that might become stuck on the lens as well.
How Do Contact Lenses Work?
Contact lenses actually move with your eye, but they work in a similar way to eyeglasses.
The shape of the lenses corrects the refractive errors in the eye, like myopia or hyperopia. They help to refocus the light on the retina where it needs to land.
If you have seen contact lenses before, you know that they are not as big or as thick as regular eyeglasses. The optic zone does not need to be as large for contact lenses because they sit right on your eyeball.
Many people may blame their dry eye symptoms on contact lenses, but that’s not always the case.
It’s possible that dry eyes could be caused by something else and there are natural remedies you may want to try before ditching the contacts altogether.
Types of Regular Contact Lenses
Regular contact lenses are a bit different than colored contact lenses. Here are the things that you need to know about regular lenses in order to better understand colored lenses.
Hard Contact Lenses
Hard contact lenses used to be very common, but are becoming less popular now because they do not provide as much comfort. They are a rigid, gas-permeable lens. They are made of firm plastic that is combined with other materials.
While they hold their shape very well, they still let oxygen flow through to get to your eye.
Hard contact lenses are helpful for people that have astigmatism or keratoconus.
Soft Contact Lenses
Soft contact lenses are the type that most people choose to wear. This is because they are very comfortable and they also have multiple options for people to choose from based on their preferences.
The different types of soft contact lenses are:
- Daily wear contacts
- Extended wear contacts
- Toric contacts
- Colored contacts
- Cosmetic contacts
All of these soft contacts are meant to be comfortable. This is great for people that wear contacts for long periods or have specialized eye needs
Additional Types of Contact Lenses
There are designed contacts for people that don’t regularly wear contacts and need them for specific purposes.
Contacts for presbyopia are made to correct the general vision problems people get after they turn 40. These lenses may be bifocal lenses, multifocal lenses, or monovision correction lenses.
Bandage contact lenses don’t have any type of prescription in them and instead are meant to help cover your cornea after an injury or surgery.
Why Do People Wear Colored Contacts?
Colored contact lenses can be similar to regular contact lenses, but the big difference is that they change your eye color. You can have a subtle change or a dramatic change – whatever you want to do to enhance your look.
Colored contact lenses are available in prescription forms or Plano forms.
Prescription color contacts correct myopia, hyperopia, or astigmatism while changing your eye color at the same time.
Plano color contacts don’t correct vision at all, but they do change your eye color for cosmetic purposes. This means you can have perfect vision and still wear colored contacts!
Colored contact lenses can cost a lot more than regular contact lenses. A lot of people that wear them regularly, however, agree that the price is worth it.
Types of Colored Contact Lenses
A lot of the colored contacts you’ll find are meant to look natural, but still, be a different color than your iris.
This part of the eye is made of colorful shapes and lines, which some color contacts imitate. Other color contacts will have a lot of tiny colored dots or radially arranged colored lines to make the lenses look more natural.
The center part of the contact lenses will be clear so that you can see through it regularly.
There are three types of tints in these lenses:
- Visibility tint – these are generally a light blue or green added to the lens to help you see it when you’re inserting or removing it from your eye
- Enhancement tint – these will be a tint that is darker and enhances the natural color of your eyes
- Opaque tint – these lenses are non-transparent tints and change your eye color entirely
If you have light-colored eyes, any of these options will work well for you. If you have dark eyes, you will need opaque tint lenses to change the eye color completely.
Whenever you see costume lenses or theatrical lenses, they will fall into the opaque color tint. You can even make yourself look like an alien or vampire with these lenses!
If you only want to change your eye color for certain days, you can get daily disposable color contacts that are easy to insert and remove.
Are Colored Contacts Safe?
Colored contacts are safe. The only reason they wouldn’t be safe for you is if you did not care for them properly or use them as prescribed.
Whether the colored contacts are prescription or not, it does not matter! The lenses themselves are going to be safe for you to wear as long as you use them as they are meant to be used.
In order to make sure that your lenses are safe for you, they need to be properly fitted by an eye doctor. They will help you determine if the color contacts are safe and comfortable, but also can help you find the type of look you want.
Getting regular eye exams is very important, but its especially true if you’re interested in contact lenses of any kind.
Similar to regular contact lenses, color contacts are not bad for you! You just have to follow the doctor’s orders and instructions. Remember how long you should be wearing your contacts and when you need to replace your lenses.
Ready to Change Your Look?
With colored contacts, you can seriously change the way that people see you on the outside.
They say eyes are the windows to the soul, so changing your eyes can change your whole look!
Colored contacts are safe to use and can be used daily if you prefer. If you need a prescription for contacts, colored contacts can also be made into a prescription version so that you can get the best of both worlds.
If you need an eye exam and have questions about using colored contacts, reach out to us and schedule an appointment.