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If you are one of the millions of Americans who wear contact lenses, there is a good chance that you have made this mistake at least once before. Don’t panic — but the Center for Disease Control warns that sleeping with your contact lenses in can increase the likelihood of developing an eye infection by up to eight times. Have you recently made this mistake? As Cambridge, MA’s leading prescription eyewear providers, the ocular experts at All Eye Care are here to offer advice on this subject.

What Happens When You Sleep With Your Contacts In? 

Before we talk about what happens when you fall asleep without removing your contact lenses, let’s talk about what’s going on with them during the daytime when you are awake. Each time you blink, your eyelids are more or less cleaning your contact lenses for you. But at night, however, your eyelids are sealed shut for eight hours, which increases the likelihood of bacteria growth and infection. If you don’t remove your contacts before hitting the sack, you may end up dealing with blurry vision, redness, irritation, and in some extreme cases, vision loss.

What to Do if You Slept in Your Contact Lenses

So, if you have fallen asleep wearing contact lenses, here’s what you need to do:

  1. Lay down and tile your head back.
  2. Add several drops of saline solution to one eye over the next few minutes.
  3. Once the eye and lens feels hydrated enough, wash your hands & remove it.
  4. Repeat steps 1-3 in your other eye and carefully remove the contact lens.

And that’s all there is to it! It’s a simple solution for a common mistake that people make, but you could seriously hurt yourself and damage your vision if you do not carefully remove a dehydrated contact lense. For more information about what to do when you fall asleep wearing contact lenses, see our press release on the subject. 

Visit All Eye Care For an Eye Exam

Whether you need a diabetic eye exam in Cambridge, MA, or contact lenses in Medford, you can rely on All Eye Care to help you maintain crystal clear vision. Give us a call the next time you need to schedule an appointment at one of our offices.