Some History About Contact Lenses
If you’ve been wearing glasses for a number of years, like me, then you may be wondering if contact lenses are right for you? There are a number of advantages to wearing contact lenses over eyeglasses and you may find that you like them better. Take a few minutes to read some good information about contact lenses and how to get them for yourself.
A Little History
Contacts actually date back into the 19th century if you can believe it. The first ones were made of brown glass and were quite difficult to wear as you might imagine but they were helpful to people with particular eye problems that could not wear glasses. Some significant breakthroughs in the 1940s and 1950s when plastic lenses were introduced. These new contacts were made of a hard plastic called polymethyl methacrylte, which did not allow gas like oxygen to pass through them. The better contact lenses that we have today are rigid gas permeable, which do allow oxygen to easily pass through them. This is important because the cornea of your eye needs oxygen from the air since it does not get oxygen from your blood.
We’ve seen in the last few years how contact lens technology is still improving. People that have astigmatism can now get toric contact lenses. And people that need bifocal lenses can now get special contacts made, too.
Why Do People Wear Contacts?
Most people’s primary advantages for wearing contact lenses is for cosmetic purposes, but there are also other reasons:
* With contact lenses, the lens moves as your eye moves, which is different from glasses, which can often distort images.
* Your side vision is not obstructed with the frame of the eyeglasses.
* It’s annoying when eyeglasses steam up when you come from the cold outside into a warm room.
* Contacts don’t get dirty like the lenses on glasses do and they don’t get rain or snow on them when you’re outside in the weather.
* The protection of contacts can often help someone with an injured cornea.
How Can I Get Contacts if I Want to Wear Them?
You should go see your eye doctor and get an eye exam and consultation. You cannot order contact lenses with a prescription for eyeglasses. It’s a much different kind of prescription that you need. You’ll go through some simple vision tests which only take about 10-15 minutes usually. You should also get tested for Glaucoma, if possible – that’s the test that Rachel on Friends didn’t like because it shoots a tiny puff of air into your eye. It’s really not that bad and its an important test to get.
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