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Occasionally you can sleep with your contact lenses in, but doing so every night is not advisable. It would be playing with fire. Regardless of what type of contacts you use, wearing them every night can allow infection to grow beneath them. That could damage your eyesight permanently, because infection on the cornea can leave little scars that block some of the light entering your eyes.
Another bad consequence of wearing your contacts every night is the loss of oxygen to the corneas. This is true even with extended-wear soft lenses and rigid gas-permeable lenses.
Your eyes would react by growing extra blood vessels over the corneas, trying to supply them with the nutrients and oxygen carried by arterial blood. In a healthy eye, the cornea has no blood vessels. It gets nutrients from the fluid behind it (aqueous fluid) and oxygen from the air in front of it. Overwear of contacts reduces oxygen access to the corneas and blood vessels will block light from entering the eyes.
Loss of oxygen can also lead to infection, corneal swelling or warping (which would distort your vision), and new allergies. These conditions can give you a lot of pain and can progress quickly. Until they were effectively treated, you would not be able to wear contact lenses at all. You could even sustain blindness from tissue death.
All in all, it is surely better to take a few minutes each night to remove your contacts and clean them for the next day. We recommend Clear Care solution. Alternatively, you could use daily disposable contacts.
If you are having any troubles with your contact lenses and would like to schedule a consultation with one of our eye doctors, please call or email us today.
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