Wearing contact lenses requires a little more attention than using glasses. The contacts need to be cleaned and after a certain amount of use, they will need to be replaced. Your contact replacement schedule will depend entirely upon the type of contact lenses that you choose to go with.

Types of Contact Lenses

There are several different kinds of contact lenses, each has a different life span and it is really a matter of personal preference as to which one you use. There are two main types, hard and soft.

Hard Lenses

Hard contact lenses are rigid and cannot be used overnight. These lenses are very durable, however, and can be cleaned daily to maintain them. With proper care, hard contact lenses will last a very long time, often up to two years. However, it is possible for the harder plastic to become contaminated or end up with mineral buildup if they aren`t carefully looked after, which will shorten their life span.

In general, hard contacts will be replaced if they are lost, damaged or have become too contaminated to fix.

Soft Lenses

Soft contacts, on the other hand, do not last as long since they are made of thinner material. There are far more varieties of these lenses and many people prefer them for comfort. It takes less time to get your eyes used to soft lenses than it does for hard ones.

Regular soft contact lenses should last up to a year with proper care. This means taking them out each evening like hard contacts and cleaning them. Keep in mind that the material tends to tear easily, so they need to be handled very gently while cleaning.

Daily wear lenses are just that, meant for daily use. You toss the contact lenses at the end of each day. This ensures fresh, clean and sterile ones are used in the morning and prevents infections and possible injuries due to improper cleaning, something that often occurs when people are using long term contacts.

Special silicone lenses allow you to wear them non-stop for an entire month. This is possibly the most popular option these days. You don`t need to think about your contacts, just put them in at the beginning of the month and wear them day and night for up to 30 days. These will need to be replaced each month, an easily remembered date.

It`s important to replace your contacts when needed. When older lenses are used, they can end up with bacteria and mineral buildup. When the encrustations scratch your eye, they open the path for those bacteria to creep in and cause infections. Since the eye is a very delicate organ, infections can be serious. Some even cause blindness.

Eye doctors often recommend daily use or frequent replacement lenses to prevent problems. When you use completely new and fresh lenses on a daily basis, or whenever you take out the old ones, the chances of developing issues with this type of eyewear are extremely low. It`s a good idea to check out this option if you aren`t interested in cleaning your lenses on a regular basis with contact lens solutions or dealing with the constant upkeep required.

To prevent possible problems, be sure to change your contact lenses when necessary. Not all lenses make it to the supposed change-by date, so if you notice that they seem cloudy, scratched or smell funny, toss them and replace. It might mean a little more cash outlay, but that`s well worth it to keep your eyes healthy and safe.

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Knowing When to Replace Your Contacts is from Good Health Weekly

If you have done any research or looked around at some of the message boards and chat rooms on the Internet concerning LASIK surgery, you are probably wondering why anybody would want to get LASIK surgery in the first place let alone schedule a procedure.

Many people make the LASIK clinics sound like they are some type of Dr. Frankenstein’s lab, and they make the procedure itself sounds kind of surrealistic. With all this bad juju going on you’d think that the only people that would be interested in getting a LASIK vision surgery are the people who can’t move about the house without their glasses on.

If you are willing to listen I’m now going to give you my story of how I came about choosing LASIK. First of all, my vision is not good, but not terrible either. For instance, whenever I go to the movies I don’t need to wear my glasses, but when I drive around town, in order to see the street signs correctly to react in time I do.

LASIK for me was not a necessity, but I just figured that it would make my life a lot easier. I love the outdoors, and very frequently I like to take the mountain bike rides as well as spending some time backpacking and climbing hills.

Glasses do not last long with me, and I am frequently grinding into the dirt which is not the best situation for contact lenses. LASIK eye surgery look very appealing to me for these reasons.

After telling you that, you probably think that I’m at least a little bit athletic, and it also probably wondering why he strong athletic guy would hesitate under such a little thing as a small scalpel. Technically, LASIK doesn’t even really use a scalpel but instead it uses a thing called a microkeratome blade which is still an incredibly sharp object that is quite close to my eye as part of the procedure.

These days however, LASIK surgeons don’t have to use that blade either, as they can do the cutting with a laser which is much better than a sharp blade. This is the fact that nobody is perfect, and I myself have had way too many accidents to feel comfortable with somebody getting near my eye with a sharp object.

Well I went and talked to three completely different and independent LASIK surgeons, and every one of them assured me that as a 28-year-old man in a really great health, with mild to moderate nearsightedness that I was probably one of the best candidates for a successful LASIK eye surgery procedure. I decided to schedule my Lasik procedure with the one that had the best track record, and coincidentally took the most time to explain everything about Lasik to me.

The Lasik surgery was not painful, though I accepted nearly everything they offered to give me comfort, including a sedative and a teddy bear. The only strange thing I remember about the Lasik procedure itself was a smell, something vaguely like hair burning. I am sure that it was my eye that was burning. It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t know about that smell before I went into the procedure, because if I had I might not have gone in.

It’s been a few years now, and I suppose I was a perfect client for LASIK, as they still have 20/20 vision and it has remained stable for a long time now. Despite any naysayers out there, if you have been deemed a good candidate for a LASIK vision correction procedure, grab a hold of that teddy bear and get it done.

My Lasik Surgery Which Corrected My Mediocre Vision is from Good Health Weekly