You may be a person that has been wearing glasses for some time or you may realize that your vision needs to be corrected and are considering going to the eye doctor to find out if you can wear contact lenses. If so, take a few minutes to read about how contacts work and how to go about getting them.

Some History About Contacts

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 contacts 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.

Contact lens technology continues to improve as we’re seeing new kinds of lenses being made for people that have astigmatism or for people that need bifocals.

Why Do People Wear Contact Lenses?

Most people’s primary reasons for wearing contacts is for cosmetic purposes, but there are also other advantages:

* Unlike eyeglasses, the lens moves with your eye so there is no image distortion.

* Your side vision is not obstructed with the frame of the glasses.

* 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.

* An injured cornea can heal faster when its protected by contact lenses.

How Can I Get Contact Lenses 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.