Question about contact lenses

[MrsSawdust]

I'm trying out some soft lenses at the moment.

My question is - can I wear them in the shower - especially when washing my hair?

Thanks.

You mean disposable, yes?

Yes.

They're not daily disposables - they're monthly torics.

Not sure if them being monthlies makes any difference to my question?

I've got gas permeable (hard) lenses and I do everything in them including showering, swimming (with goggles) and snorkelling.

I always wear my contact lenses in the shower (Bausch and Lomb Purevision) but the optician did get cats bum mouth when I said I did. He did concede that if no water actually got in my eyes then it was fine.

dd wears daily disposable contacts and can swim, shower in them.
However when she used non disposable ones she was told by the optician to take them out for swimming and showering.

I have the same ones and have showered in them; I don't do it often though. I think the theory is you can get some sort of bug from tap water, but like pesto I'm a bit because surely then you should screw your eyes closed when it rains...??

Don't go under the shower with your eyes open! It won't be comfortable anyway. Also avoid shampoo in your eyes, but that would sting enough without contacts.

I wear monthly disposables in the shower (otherwise woudn't be able to find the shampoo!), but do not let water run over my face. There is a bug in tap water you can catch, this is why you should never rinse or store with tap water either. I wear goggles for swimming, although not for messing about with the DCs type swimming. Inevitably you get a bit of splashing with both these activities, but I've been wearing lenses for 25 years and managed not to catch anything.

i have both soft (monthly) and gas permeable lenses, one in each eye (yeah, i'm a freak).

I wouldn't think twice about wearing soft lenses in the shower and would swim in them too. Also wear the gp in the shower daily though am more cautious about swimming, even with goggles because i've lost them before and they cost 50 quid each ...

i don't know why our tap water is so dangerous - in the US the little bottles of solution will tell you to rinse your gas permeable lenses with water after cleaning!

I wore GPs until about 4 years ago, sometimes lost them into my goggles, pinged out when I blinked! I rinsed mine in water for years, had forgotten that, but didn't catch anything.

I have monthly torics, and although they are fine to wear in the shower, I find it more comfortable to take them out and give them a quick rinse in solution afterwards.

Looking back at my two posts, they sound a bit contradictory, I have always known about this bug, opticians do always mention it, but have chosen to risk it to some extent and got away with it, not sure how common the bug actually is. My feeling is that you should try and minimise water contact, but not worry overly if there is a bit of accidental splashing. If that helps!

This "bug in tap water" thing, I reckon it's just a conspiracy to make us buy more expensive bottles of lens fluid. I started wearing hard/GP lenses back in 1982 (cripes!) and was told by my optician to rinse with tap water, which I did on a daily basis for YEARS, because no-one ever told me otherwise. It was only relatively recently that I found out about this "bug" and switched to saline. I still have both eyes in full working order.
You wouldn't want water in your eyes in the shower, lenses or no lenses, just keep 'em shut!

My optician told me that 'tap water is the enemy of contacts' but that is wrt soaking them.

I was told that as long as you wash and dry your hands before handling them, and sterilise the cases ocassionaly then I should be fine.

(18 yrs wearing contacts and never an infection.)

I wear mine in the shower, bath and use older ones at the end of their fortnight for swimming (using fortnightly disposables here...) but do usually attempt to shut my eyes when using shampoo
My friend still of the old school theory takes hers out, licks it and replaces if there's grit or bits in her eye (ewwww) and she also appears to have two fully functioning eyeballs [with the obv short sightedness!] I've been using soft lenses of various sorts for over twenty years and no particular problems caused by water - pregnancy was a far far bigger issue to me!!

btw, mrs sawdust, if you get round to considering make up - particularly thinking mascara here, the Boots7 'sensitive eyes' stuff in the silver tube is made with lens wearers in mind, allegedly and although somewhat boring to admit, I've been getting it for the best part of 20yrs and no probs ever. Am too much of a wuss to try out anything else these days

Yep, I'm a licker too, especially if I'm out and about and get a bit of grit under them. Just worked out, been wearing the blighters for 28 years (not, the same pair, obv....). I can only use gas permeables as my eyes no longer tolerate anything else. Must be all those tap water bugs I've picked up.

You're not supposed to (my optician says).

Nor when swimming. I do tho. I wear goggles in the pool.

Reason for not doing is to do with infection. I am pretty scrupulous wrt throwing them away after a month tho.

I also have never had infection of any kind and have been wearing lenses (soft and before that gp and before that hard ) for about 25 years as well. YY I used to wash GPs in water as well (or even put them in my mouth in extremis! but I didn't say that!)

Cannot believe those of you still wearing GPs, are they not much less comfortable than the lovely soft ones? DD's glasses-wearing pals were quizzing me about my lenses the other day bless em (they are 8/9 so a bit young as yet)

Not that young though, Clary. My DS wore them from aged 10.

ooh really? I might tell DD's pal who is fed up of not being able to see in the swimming pool (she will be 10 in 13 months' time).

Provided she is sensible about handwashing, etc, there is no reason for her not to wear them. After seeing my DS use them at 10, it gave me the confidence to use them after years of wearing glasses.....never looked back (no pun intended!)

the only infections I have ever had are when the manufacturers stopped making either the lenses or the solutions and I have had to change them!
I always wear goggles in the pool- just in case the lenses float out (yes- it has happened to me) rather than infection. How else can I see in the pool- especially when supervising my 2 non swimmers? Mind you, chlorine always irritates my eyes so the lenses have to come out when I get home.

Clary, the only people who wear GPs now are those who've been wearing them for years and now cannot tolerate anything else (i.e. me). My optician says he no longer prescribes them to anyone new, but there are still a dwindling band of long-term GP wearers. A few years ago I did a week's trial of soft lenses and it was agony, couldn't open my eyes, vision was permanently cloudy. Aparently all the years of GPs has affected the way I blink, and my eyes don't close all the way, so soft lenses just dry straight up. Guess I came to lenses a little too early.

I loved my GPs, reason I switched was twofold, optician told me that newer sorts were actually more permeable than GPs, up until then they had been a lot less permeable, also was offered the sort you can sleep in, this was fantastic with a new baby, no more fumbling round for glasses in the middle of the night when baby wakes up, lovely. Comfort wise I would say they are both about the same, 4 years on I still find the soft ones a lot more fiddly to handle and put in and out.