Would you sleep in the same pair of underwear for months at a time without ever washing them!?
Contacts need proper cleaning habits too, as they are very prone to accumulating bacteria and while sleep and contacts are two of our favorite things, they truly must be kept separate.
Contacts during sleep prevent your eyes from getting the oxygen and hydration they need to fight off bacterial or microbial infections.
The burning red eye of one night’s sleep in your lenses can result in conditions like a corneal ulcer, corneal neovascularization or corneal scars if this becomes a habit, resulting in reduced vision loss or ultimately blindness.
This is your reminder to find 30 seconds in your day to take your contacts out before sleep, properly clean them with solutions such as OptiFree or Bioture and throw them away at the end of their life span!
Understanding Glaucoma: Symptoms, Diagnoses and Treatment
Glaucoma is a progressive blinding disease, and sadly there is no cure for it. The scary thing about glaucoma is patients will typically be asymptomatic until they get their eyes checked or until it is too late!
Glaucoma is a disease that affects the optic nerve from high eye pressure. Optic nerves are the cables that connects our eyes to our brain so high eye pressure can cause irreversible damage to your nerves. Time over time your peripheral vision is slowly affected resulting ultimately in complete vision loss in the end stages.
One of the key ways we diagnose glaucoma is by performing an IOP (intra-ocular pressure) reading, a routine process of every eye exam. Additional tests if we suspect glaucoma include an OCT and Visual Field to assess the structural loss of the nerve tissue as well as the functional loss to your vision.
The treatment for glaucoma is eye drops to lower the eye pressure and slow down the progression of peripheral vision loss. Sometimes additional eyedrops are needed or even surgery! This is your reminder to get your routine comprehensive eye exam and keep your eye health in check.