Why Is Oxygen Crucial to the Eye?

Oxygen is crucial to your body, including your eyes. It may not seem obvious, but your eyes need enough oxygen in order to be healthy and functional. If you’re wearing contact lenses for long hours every day, you should be aware of how this can restrict the amount of oxygen reaching your eyes.

Why Oxygen Is Important to Your Eyes

The cornea does not have blood vessels, and it can’t create its own blood supply. That is why your eyes depend on the atmosphere and the tears coating them to allow enough oxygen into the system. If  you’re wearing contact lenses, this could affect how much oxygen is reaching your eyes. You may feel the impact of this, especially if you wear your contacts incorrectly for extended periods. You may experience symptoms, such as eye discomfort, hazy vision, red eyes and more. Over time, the incorrect use of contact lenses and the lack of oxygen reaching your eyes can result in eye problems or optical damage.

How to Ensure Enough Oxygen Is Reaching Your Eyes

Whether you are using standard prescription contact lenses or special lenses, such as scleral lenses, it’s important to observe good habits that would help keep a good supply of oxygen to your eyes. Below are a few essential tips that you should keep in mind:

• Replace your contact lenses regularly and on time. Whether you have daily disposable contacts or weekly or monthly disposables, stick to the scheduled replacements, and do not extend the use of your contacts.
• Make sure you don’t wear your contacts for extended periods on any given day. Allow your eyes to have a break from the lenses. Ideally, you should be wearing them for only eight hours. Furthermore, make sure to have at least eight hours of sleep so that your eyes can fully rest.
• Clean your contact lenses before wearing them and after removing them. This way, you can get rid of any particles that may have gotten stuck on the lenses and which could prevent oxygen from reaching your eyes. Also, don’t forget to wash your hands properly before handling your contacts.

Insight Vision Center Optometry provides quality eye care to everyone, from children to adults. You can count on us to be a one-stop eye clinic and optometry center that can readily cater to different needs, including vision therapy, dry eye treatment, LASIK management/co-management and more.

Call us at (714) 486-3315, or fill out our contact form to schedule an appointment. We serve patients in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, CA.