You should not wear your daily contact lenses more than once. Even though using them for longer may look like a way to save your time and money, they can harm your health.

Contact lenses come with various benefits, ranging from correcting your sight to removing the need for eyeglasses. But the lenses also come with challenges. Eye doctors warn that overwearing your contact lenses threatens your eye health.

Why Can You Not Reuse Daily Contacts?

Using your daily contacts outside their recommended period can cause the following problems:

Dry Eyes

Wearing expired contact lenses can trigger dry eye disease. Dry eye is an eye condition where your eyes produce insufficient tears, poor quality tears, or both. The front surface of your eye, the cornea, absorbs oxygen straight from the air. Because contact lenses can partially hinder oxygen from entering the eye, your eyes can become dry and itchy.

Some contact lenses are gas permeable and allow oxygen to pass through. But they can still be a problem, particularly after wearing them for an extended period. Additionally, contact lenses can cause dry eyes when they absorb tears meant to lubricate the eyes.

Eye Infection

The contact lens solution can spoil. It can become more alkaline or acidic, causing infection and becoming painful to wear. Overwearing your contact lenses increases your risk of getting bacterial keratitis, a cornea infection caused by bacteria.

With bacterial keratitis, your cornea can swell and affect your vision. Taking good care of your contact lenses and discarding them when they go bad will lower your risk of eye infection.

Corneal Bruising and Scarring

During the course of wearing your contacts, proteins accumulate on your eye lens and reduce the flow of oxygen into your eyes. With a low supply of oxygen, your cornea starts becoming dry.

As your cornea becomes drier, your contact lens may get glued to the cornea. If the contact lens sticks to the cornea and you try to remove it, you can bruise your cornea. Trying to force the contact lenses out can rip off the cornea.

Aside from the pain, a bruise like that can cause scarring and the need for a corneal transplant. The injury can also trigger vision loss.

Visual Damage and Possible Vision Loss

Serious eye infections and severe corneal injury can impair vision and ultimately cause vision loss. Even when clean, expired contact lenses can affect your vision and risk your overall eye health. While daily contact lenses are safe to use throughout the day, you should give your eyes enough time to relax and wear up-to-date contact lenses.

Safety Is Important

There are several types of contact lenses: daily wear, extended wear, soft, and hard, all of which eye doctors consider safe. But sometimes, contact lenses can cause serious issues because they carry the risk of eye infection and damage.

So, be meticulous about caring for your daily contacts and keeping up with their prescribed schedules. You really should not cut corners when it comes to your contact lenses’ hygiene and safety.

For more on the effects of overwearing daily contacts, call Clarity Vision at (919) 737-7200 for our office in Smithfield, North Carolina.