As you start to lose your eyesight, which happens to most of us at about the age of forty, you have two basic options: specs or contact lenses. Both contact lenses and spectacles have their advantages and disadvantages, so whichever you choose is certainly a personal decision. However, some individuals have ‘dry eyes’, which means that the tear ducts do not dampen the eyes as much as normal.
If someone has dry eyes, then wearing glasses will not aggravate the condition, but if someone with dry eyes chooses to wear contact lenses for personal reasons, the condition can make their lives very uncomfortable.
Some people who wear contacts but have dry eyes will almost certainly experience a discomfort that will lead to the person rubbing their eyes, which will make the situation worse.
There might be medical reasons for the lacrimal ducts not making enough moisture to lubricate the eyes, but age can be a factor. If you have itchy eyes and are more than sixty, it might be in your interests to change from contacts to spectacles.
Some people find it a very difficult decision to take. TV personalities and film stars seldom like to be photographed wearing spectacles. All right, there are not too many of them, but there are hundreds of millions of people who look up to their screen idols and copy them blindly.
One of the causes of dry eyes, besides age or personal illness, is environmental conditions. Pollution affects different individuals in different ways, but tobacco smoke affects most peoples’ eyes, to say nothing of their lungs.
Evaporation is another reason for dry eyes. This sounds strange, because you would imagine that the water trapped between the eyes and the lenses could not evaporate, but a lot of contact lenses are composed of fifty percent water to make them more flexible and therefore more comfortable.
A hot environment will evaporate water from the lenses and the lenses will try to replenish themselves by sucking water off your eyes – a form of osmosis. This is a sensible reason for soaking your contact lenses in a solution during the night. The solution is there to sterilize the lenses, but it will also permit the lenses to ‘fill up’ again.
Therefore, a possible solution to the problem of dry eyes, if evaporation is your problem, is to replace your lenses half way through the day. another way of combating dry eyes if you would like to wear contacts, is to put drops in your eyes every hour.
You can purchase these drops from a chemist in small containers or you can buy a litre of the solution and refill your droppers yourself. However, a saline solution (salt and water) is also as effective as anything and a lot cheaper.
If none of this works for you then why not just switch to glasses? The trend is to be more open about oneself and part of this fashion is to admit your age, wear your wig openly, if that is what you do and be| seen wearing your spectacles.
Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on several subjects, but is now involved with Designer Spectacles. If you want to know more, please visit our web site at Spectacles Direct.