Undoubtedly, contact lenses are highly comfortable and convenient for each one of us but there’s a drawback with them, you can’t wear them all the time. Since you can be at risk to suffer from various eye infections or chronic conditions; if you wear them for too long. Let’s list out the significant risks of wearing contact lenses:
Higher Risk of getting affected with Eye Infections (Especially Keratitis)
Keratitis, the most frequent disease that could result from wearing contact lenses, is brought on by dust, viruses, bacteria, and in rare situations, eye infections. If there are scratches in your contact lenses, then they could scrape against on the outer surface of your cornea, which makes it much easier for germs to accumulate. These scratches in your cornea can also be known as abrasion.
Remember, the eye infections can occur for a number of reasons:
Whenever you do not remove your contact lenses during the night
Wearing your contacts while swimming
Exposing your contacts to any kind of water
Maybe not cleaning your contacts properly
Sporting old contact lenses, or
Wearing contacts which aren’t properly fitted to you.Corneal Scarring
If you are allergic to the substance used to create the contact lenses (plastic or silicone) or keep contact lenses in for a long time, it can result in corneal inflammation and trauma, which may result in scarring and permanent damage to your eyesight (this is also exceedingly painful, therefore corneal vulnerability is something you want to stop at all costs).
Decreased Corneal Reflex
Blinking is most likely not something that you pay much attention to throughout the day, since it’s an involuntary motion – but it’s a constant movement is critical to keep your eyes and eyesight healthy.
Blinking is a protective mechanism which helps keep outside irritants from damaging your own eyes, such as compounds in the environment such as dust, bacteria, insects, and even physical contact. Just imagine if someone were about to poke your eye, and the body didn’t “receive the message” to shut your eyelids?
You believe or not, wearing contact lenses on a daily bases can affect your blinking rate by decreasing your corneal sensitvity.
Dry Eye Condition
Itchy, irritated, dry, and reddish eyes are the most common complaints if wearing contact lenses, and such symptoms usually suggest dry eye syndromes. You may get dry eye condition even in case you don’t wear contact lenses, but nonetheless, it commonly occurs when you first adjust to wearing contacts, when your contacts dry out as you are wearing them or wear contacts that don’t match you correctly.
Ptosis (Eyelid Drooping)
Ptosis is the medical term for droopy upper eyelids and also research shows there’s a direct connection between sporting equally soft and hard contact lenses and ptosis. But, studies reveal that individuals who use hard contact lenses will be in a 20 times greater chance of creating ptosis than people who wear soft lenses.
Vision Loss and Blindness
When eye ailments or corneal ulcers from contact lenses have been left untreated, they could cause vision impairment and permanent blindness. This is especially true for bacterial keratitis, which can damage the structure and form of the retina.