Can I please alert you all to the dangers of swimming with contact lenses in.

[chipmonkey]

this lady has lost the sight in one eye after swimming with her contact lenses in.
Acanthamoeba is found in tap water/pool water/shower water and is not killed by chlorine. It's a rare infection but very painful and sight-threatening.
I warn all my contact lens patients about this but I know some are still very blase about it.
So best not to rinse lenses with tap water, swim or shower with them in.

I've never heard of this, but I'm a very, very occasional lens wearer.

Almost the only time I do is for water parks, that won't let me wear my prescription googles.

Since I love water shoots, as do the DDs, this is a risk I shall continue to take (might be better at taking my lenses out afterwards).

DD2 keeps threatening to have contacts and I keep telling her she's too young she's (11).

I have promised her some prescription googles when she next has her eyes tested.

But constantly taking contact lenses in and out can cause abrasions on your eyes (ultimately damaging nerve endings required for tear production, which is necessary to protect your eyes from infections and pain...) and introduce bugs to your lenses, so taking your lenses out to shower and swim is not necessarily safer than leaving them in... if you are that worried, you really shouldn't be wearing contact lenses - long term, it is beginning to be thought that laser eye surgery is safer... despite its risks...

Leonie I've sailed, swam in waves and white water canoed in my glasses, you just need one of those stupid looking elastic straps to hold them on. They really do work. I've even been down seriously big water slides, before 'elf and safety got in the way.

I do generally swim in my glasses, my googles steam up.

I mainly use my googles if I want to do serious DD free lengths or go snorkelling.

I probably look very, very silly with googles, nose clip and snorkel, but it works. I don't do enough for it to be worth shelling out for a corrected dive mask.

I was always told that it's storing/cleaning your lenses in water that's riskier, the odd splash of water is very unlikely to cause problems and people do get water in their eyes all the time, without going swimming.

I don't wear lenses in swimming pools because if you open your eyes underwater you could lose your lens!

Prescription goggles are definitely the way forward

I am another person who swims with their contact lenses in. I know i shouldn't but my prescription is -11.25 and so nothing isn't an option and would be worried glasses would come off. When I've looked into swimming goggles before, the price goes up massively when you're up to about -8.

My contact lenses are both -10 - with swimming goggles do people normally get the same prescription as their glasses or contact lenses? Am wondering if I could get some slightly lower powered ones and be a little blurred round the edges for about £30 rather than higher powered at about £80 or so.

Startail I was 11 when I got my lenses. :) Maybe just about to turn 12. Completely changed my life.

I ended up having a corneal graft after contracting an infection from a contact lense, which caused a corneal ulcer. It wasn't fun and I still can't correct the vision in my right eye to anything close to 20/20, although I can sort of see out of it. These were two weekly disposables which I'm not sure even exist anymore.

I have two-weekly disposables - have done for a while.

I too have swum in my lenses but my eyes are quite sensitive to chlorine and if I got water in my eyes, the chlorine seemed to get sort of stuck against my eye and drove me crazy. So I stopped swimming (as I too may have wandered into the gents or hopped gaily into the deep end!) Now I wear my glasses and do a rather dignified "old lady" stroke, the one they use so as not to get their hair wet :o As a family we are starting to swim more so may have to shell out for a pair of prescription goggles

Hell, I have worn hard lenses for 30 years. I have swum, showered etc . now I hear that my habit of pretty much only using tap water to rinse clean and soak them is a no-no. The solutions are just so damn expensive that I only ever use them very infrequently.
I guess i have been very lucky.

Won't glasses be prone to getting a bit battered and rusty if you swim in them? Do you use an old pair that you don't mind being trashed in the water or lost altogether, and then not swim with your face in the water? I'm very hypermobile and was told that swimming "old lady style" (ie breaststroke with face out of the water) was very, very bad for your neck, particularly if you were already getting arthritis. Which leads one ever closer to the conclusion that swimming is not as good for you as some people claim!...

thanks OP for clear explanation
I will use sterile saline now, promise
although mine are GPs- so I'll take the risk of showering in them

If I don't wear lenses in the shower then when I shave my legs I end up with stripes. Really not a good look.

I've worn daily disposables for over 10yrs and this has never been mentioned to me . However i've never had an infection as I'm strict about handwashing when I put them in or take them out.

I only swim a couple of times a year though so I suppose I should be pretty safe. And in a moment of Adlington inspired fitness I bought some goggles last month, that'll keep out most of the water, I hope.

Er chip monkey if you are still reading what are these tablets you speak of that you put gp lenses in ? Have never done this either

Prescription swimming goggles are really good. You can get them for about £30. H has relatively poor sight (-6) and feels "safe" (ie not going to get lost/trip over) in his.

I have the monthly extended wear disposables, started off not sleeping in them on the advice of the optician (about 7 years ago) and gradually started leaving them in overnight (I take them out one night a week now and try and wear my glasses into the following day too). All this with the optician's approval. I too think they are more likely to get damaged / contaminated if you handle them every day so it is a balance of risks.

Before this I wore GPs for 20 years. I have been told repeatedly by opticians over the years about this amoeba, and I am very careful not to let any tap water near the lenses when cleaning and storing them but obviously I shower in them (I keep my face out of the water so only the occasional splash). I do swim in them too, with the DCs, mine are young enough to need a careful eye keeping on them and old enough to want to have underwater swimming races with me, I am -10 so need correction and I don't really want to wear my £300 glasses in the pool and get them corroded / lost. I haven't got any old ones. I wear blank goggles over my lenses but I push them up onto my forehead frequently to be able to see the DCs properly. I don't really know what the answer is, I saw this article a few weeks ago and it made me think about getting prescription goggles, but then you are faffing about with contact lenses and solutions in changing rooms, or having to remember to wear your glasses that day.

And also a suspicous increase in the number of people suffering from dry eyes after years of contact lens use, even after they stop wearing their contact lenses (ie a possible causal link between soft contact lenses and chronic, incurable dry eyes?)

Tell me more, I've just started to notice this in myself.

Any ideas for alternatives while surfing?

Chief - they are enzyme tablets, a concentrated way of shifting protein build up from the lenses (a bit like the enzymes in bio washing powder). I never did it either, but the optician told me there was no need as my daily cleaning was obviously doing the trick and there was no problem with build up on my lenses.

Just been googling the goggles, it isn't easy to find a pair that will let you have one eye in -9 and the other in -10.

We've just bought prescription goggles for ds4 (aged 14) from Specsaver. Cost £25. I asked several other high street opticians and couldn't find another that did them. They were ordered as the closest to his prescription - I don't think they do 'half sizes' - so -5 in one eye and -4 in the other, i think. He is happy with them. I've tried them and they would definitely be better than 'naked' eye though my prescription is a little stronger. Years ago I was told, for me, it would cost around £100 for 'made to measure' ones (I have quite marked astigmatism and apparently 'Cyl power' isn't corrected as well with cheaper ones, so things would be a bit blurry round the edges). When DCs were little I wore old glasses in pool, as knew about the 'no contacts' rule - though no longer wear contacts due to thyroid eye problem. Let's face it though , you dn't swim much 'properly' if sole adult with small children. I'm not sure I'll ever have a spare £100 to buy swimming goggles, and don't swim so much these days anyway. I found chlorine in pool turned nose pieces green, hence not using good specs for swimming.

3duracellbunnies - my son always wears prescription goggles we have had a few different ones and the quality has always been really good - we have had aquasee and some from asda too - we've generally paid around the 20-30 pound mark. He is now 12 so we've moved into adult ones - saw these which are cheap as chips and bought a couple of pairs as I didn't think they'd last. They are however really good quality and he has been wearing one pair a couple of times a week for about 6 months and still going strong!! Even the expensive ones start to get fogged and scratched after about 6-9 months so great value I think.

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007UVOMIS/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i00

amck, I wish we'd known about these ones! I might order a pair for me and give them a test drive.

worth a punt at that price baskets. For future reference in case you don't find these any good, Boots Opticians will order them in for you regardless of whether you are a patient of theirs and so will Asda. We were going to Optical express who could get the adult ones but wouldn't order me in a childs pair so they lost the business to Boots :)

My son has a -6.5 prescription so not practical for him to swim with nothing.