Are You a Candidate for Contact Lenses

If you’ve been wearing glasses for a number of years, like me, then you may be wondering if contacts are right for you? There are a number of advantages to wearing contact lenses over eyeglasses and you may find that you like them better. Take a few minutes to read some good information about contacts and how to get them for yourself.

Contact Lens History

Contacts actually date back into the 19th century if you can believe it. The first ones were made of brown glass and were quite difficult to wear as you might imagine but they were helpful to people with particular eye problems that could not wear glasses. Some significant breakthroughs in the 1940s and 1950s when plastic lenses were introduced. These new contact lenses were made of a hard plastic called polymethyl methacrylte, which did not allow gas like oxygen to pass through them. The better contact lenses that we have today are rigid gas permeable, which do allow oxygen to easily pass through them. This is important because the cornea of your eye needs oxygen from the air since it does not get oxygen from your blood.

Contact lens technology continues to improve as we’re seeing new kinds of lenses being made for people that have astigmatism or for people that need bifocals.

Why is it Good to Wear Contact Lenses?

Beside for cosmetic reasons, people wear contact lenses for a variety of other advantages including:

* With contact lenses, the lens moves as your eye moves, which is different from eyeglasses, which can often distort images.

* Eyeglass frames can annoyingly block your side vision.

* Contact lenses don’t steam up like eyeglasses do when you go from cold to warm temperatures.

* Contacts don’t get dirty like the lenses on glasses do and they don’t get rain or snow on them when you’re outside in the weather.

* An injured cornea can heal faster when its protected by contacts.

So How Do You Get Contacts?

You should go see your eye doctor and get an eye exam and consultation. You cannot order contact lenses with a prescription for eyeglasses. It’s a much different kind of prescription that you need. You’ll go through some simple vision tests which only take about 10-15 minutes usually. You should also get tested for Glaucoma, if possible – that’s the test that Rachel on Friends didn’t like because it shoots a tiny puff of air into your eye. It’s really not that bad and its an important test to get.