Sleep in Your Contacts? You Could Wake Up Blind!

I had the intention of being a contact-wearer. But after a week in high school of trying to get them in every morning and only ending up with puffy, red, and irritated eyes (sans contacts), I decided they just weren’t for me.

By Abby

But, all of my roommates in college currently wear contacts, so I hear about them constantly. Whether, it’s “Whoops, I passed out in my contacts last night after coming home from the bar” or “I don’t have time to clean them before class today,” the topic always seems to comes up.

Well, if you are one of those girls who wears contact in college, you may want to pay attention to a new study that reports, “Almost three quarters of contact lens wearers are risking blindness because of their dirty habits.”

It also found that over 15% of wearers will pick an unwashed contact lens off the floor and pop it in their eye and 70% of people keep their lenses in for far too long every day.

“Careless contact lens wearers rarely realize their bad habits increase the risk of their contracting eye diseases, including conjunctivitis and acanthamoeba keratitis, a rare but very painful and potentially blinding infection of the cornea, the transparent covering at the front of the eye.”Sounds pretty gross right? I was surprised that these seemingly bad habits could lead to such a severe thing like blindness.

Another interesting fact was that women have the dirtiest habits. For all the potential risks and how to avoid blindness, check out the article.