Getting to Know Contact Lenses
Do you think you’d like to ditch your eyeglasses and switch to contact lenses? If you do so, you’ll be in good company: around 45 million Americans wear contact lenses. Since this is such a popular choice for vision correction, let’s get into contact lenses in these two springy blogs at Central Valley.
Who’s Wearing Them?
As mentioned about 45 million people are wearing contacts. Considering the total U.S. population is 329.5 million, you didn’t have to pay much attention in your high school math class to understand that’s about 14% of the country.
The average age of contact lens wearers worldwide is 31 years old.
The breakdown:
- 8% are under 18 years old
- 17% are between 18-24
- 75% are adults aged 25 and up
Today, most contact lenses worn are soft contacts. These were first introduced in the U.S. in 1971. Contact lenses are “medical devices” and as such they are regulated by the FDA through the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
Can People Wear Contacts When Playing Sports?
In contrast to hard contact lenses, which presented a small risk of breaking if worn when playing some sports, soft contact lenses are the choice of many athletes. They don’t want to deal with the hassles of wearing glasses when they’re sweating profusely. In contact sports, glasses can be a problem with any impacts. Also, fogging is a typical complaint, especially in sports with a restrictive helmet, such as ice hockey.
Soft contact lenses can correct for just about all vision problems, and they enable the athlete to forget about their vision correction and concentrate on the ball, puck, or whatever.
Can Contact Lenses Become Stuck?
If you’re a serial eye rubber (which is not a good habit with your eyes regardless of wearing contacts or not) it is possible to push a soft contact lens up under the eyelid. To get the lens out, don’t panic, and certainly don’t put anything up under your eyelid. You can usually work it down by gently manipulating your eyelid. If it still stays, simply come see us at one of our three locations and we can easily get it out.
We’ll talk about contact lenses more in April’s second daffodil-touched blog. Until then, if you need to make an appointment, call us at (800) 244-9907.
Posted in: Contact Lenses, Optical Services
