
As a glasses wearer who absolutely hates the feeling of glasses, contacts have saved me. The actual act of putting contacts in is a horrible thought to me. They are so cool I accept it. Contacts are round pieces of thin bendable plastic that suctions to your eye to correct your vision. Specifically correct refractive errors in your eyes by changing the shape of your retina. The refractive errors are what make your vision blurry.
45 million people wear contacts for four different reasons. Nearsightedness, Farsightedness, Age-related Farsightedness, and Astigmatism. The suction of the contacts to your eye means that the contacts move with your eye and support a very active lifestyle without worrying about glasses falling off. Contacts were invented in the 1970s but have been in development since the 16th century. Optics was first being investigated in the 16th century but the technology and material for contacts didn't exist until the 1970s.
Contacts are not for the weak. They are medical devices that come with all the usual risks. They can cause eye infections, corneal abrasions, and can scratch or hurt your eyes if you don't clean them correctly. Depending on the kind of contacts you have, the cleaning and care process is different. Soft contacts, which can be worn for different amounts of time. I have soft contacts that can only be worn for the day but some can be worn for longer periods of time like a month. Caring for daily contacts is pretty much nothing because you throw them out at the end of the day. Caring for monthly contacts means that you have to take them out and either wash or put them in a saline solution. Soft contacts have the plus of convenience, but can aboard oils and irritating materials from your fingers.
Hard contacts, or gas permeable, involve a little more patience and time. They change the actual shape of your eye which means it takes a couple eye appointments to get your prescription right. They are less comfortable than soft contacts but cheaper because you only need one pair after you have gotten your prescription right.
Your eyes see things because of light bouncing and bending off of your retina. The vision receptors in your eye take that information to the brain. The same thing happens with colors. Different amounts of light are bounced off by different colors which make them appear different. When your eyes can't properly bend light, glasses or contacts refract and bend this light in a different way than your eyes to make your vision sharper. Nearsighted people have a focal point that is before your retina and means that you can't see far away. When your farsighted light gets to your retina before it focuses and you can't see up close. An astigmatism is when either your cornea or the lens inside your eye have an uneven curve.
Contacts are really helpful to a lot of people because of style, functionality, or convenience.
Works Cited
“Contact Lenses: Types and How They Work.” Cleveland Clinic, https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/10737-contacts. Accessed 5 September 2024.
“How Do Contact Lenses Work? Vision Correction with Contacts.” Eyeconic Blog, 17 March 2023, https://blog.eyeconic.com/tips-tricks-and-tech/how-contact-lenses-work-contacts-101.html. Accessed 5 September 2024.
Comentarios