Can you swim with contact lenses?

Wearing contact lenses in the water? Yes or no?

You may take a crack at wearing contact lenses while swimming, which is; however, very harmful to your eyes I have to say. The most risky body of water is lakes and rivers where a micro-organization named acanthamoeba could easily attach to your lenses. And if so, your cornea is prone to get infection and inflammation. To say the least, even in relatively cleaner swimming pool, it is also not advisable to wear contact lenses. Though the chances of microbial infection is decreased in the swimming poor, eye irritation is very likely to happen due to chlorine’s sticking to the lenses. Some people have a penchant for swimming in the ocean. To them, wearing contact lenses is equally not recommendable because when meeting large waves their contact lenses may fall off. Water is critical to most of the organisms in the world but also home to numerous viruses and microbes that are dangerous to our eyes. So, the authoritative FDA, along with other relevant institutions, has declared wearing contact lenses is not in the least desirable in any kind of water.

Wearing contact lenses in the water? How?
If you are really determined to wear contact lenses while swimming, a few instructions described further below may be helpful.

1. Resort to protective swimming goggles. Having a pair of protective swimming goggles on while you are wearing contact lenses is considered as the best way to protect your lenses and eyes. The goggles tightly fit around your eye sockets will keep your eyes and contact lenses from any intrusion of water as well as microbes and chlorine. In this way, contact lenses may not fall off as well.

2. Daily disposable and soft contact lenses are always better then rigid and long-lasting ones. Unlike hard or rigid lenses, soft lenses are more recommendable since their circumference is lager which can easily and tightly attach to the eyes. And this eliminates the possibility of the falling off of the lenses. Then daily disposable lenses are agreeable because you can without scruples throw them away after the one-off use when swimming. And accordingly the risk of suffering eye contamination, infection and irritation is dramatically reduced.

3. Get your contact lenses carefully and thoroughly rinsed and disinfected immediately after swimming. If your contact lenses are not daily disposable, make sure that they are timely cleanssed and disinfected; otherwise they may encourage the breeding of millions of bacteria and viruses. Now lots of sterile saline solutions available in the market are quite contributive to the cleaning of contact lenses.

How to make remedial measures when your eyes are infected?
If water gets in your eyes when you are swimming with contact lenses on, one essential thing you should do is to cleanse and disinfect the contact lenses right away; and another equally important thing is to have your eyes examined and treated. If your infected eyes are let sit, they will get worse and many sight-threatened eye diseases will follow shortly. Bear in mind that proper contact lens wearing reduces the threat of infection and contamination. And even in the worst case of eye infection, to follow the eye doctor’s treatment and recommendations is all the same profitable.