Can wearing contacts too long damage your eyes?

I’ve been wearing contacts for about 10 years now and I typically leave them in for up to 6 months at a time. I’ve used mostly Acuvue but recently switched to Night and Day disposable contacts which are supposed to be safe for 30 days of continuous wear.

Is there really any harm in leaving them in this long or do the contact lens companies just want you to buy more? I can’t even feel them and often forget that I even wear contacts. I’ve never had an eye infection, I go to the eye doctor once a year and my vision hasn’t changed at all in the last 10 years. I’ve heard that my chances of getting an infection are increased, but I would think I would know once my eyes were infected and I would then remove them.

The only thing I’ve noticed is that when I do actually take them out, my eyes feel like they’re burning and are extremely sensitive until I put new ones in.

Have there been any cases in which wearing contacts for extended periods of time have caused any serious damage to the eyes? I think maybe my eyes have adapted to them and it’s as though they’re a part of me now.

You’d really be willing to take a reactive approach, and wait for an eye infection to tell you it’s time to take your contacts out?

Yeah, I can quote rel gud.

Well, I’ve got three big* scars (and lots of little ones) on one of my eyes from wearing contacts too long.

Of course, I only wore them 10 or 12 hrs a day and removed them every night.
(I’ve got disposable ones that I wear for a couple months and then toss out for a new pair. They’re supposed to be replaced every couple weeks though.)

*big, as in the doctor can see them, not big as in they affect my vision.

I wore “hard” contact lenses for a while a couple of years back. Had to stop because, being hard, they were not oxygen-permeable - blood vessels started growing into the lens of my eyes to supply the oxygen that they should have been absorbing through the surface. A worrying prospect, to say the least.

Disclaimer: I do work for an ophthalmology department, but in research. I do not deal with contact/glasses sales at all. IANAD/N.

You seriously want to risk screwing up your eyesight just because you don’t feel like taking your contacts out?! Wow.

If you don’t believe the contact lens companies, here’s the Mayo Clinic’s description of contact lens complications (scroll about 2/3 of the way down the page). Among other things, you’re risking depriving your cornea of oxygen, which can even lead to blood vessels growing into the cornea (corneal vascularization), which might mean you have to change lens types or stop wearing contacts completely. The contacts might warp your cornea, screwing with your vision and requiring you to stop wearing them for weeks or months while the contact shifts back into shape. You could have an allergic reaction to a protein layer that develops on uncleaned contacts, leading to things like an eye discharge and blurry vision. And yes, you might even get an infection that could mean anything from leave out your contacts while you take meds, to scarring of the cornea affecting your vision, all the way up to loss of the eye in extreme cases.

I’m not qualified to judge why your eyes burn when your contacts are out, but my wild guess would be that you are affecting your cornea in some fashion, and not in a good way either. I also suspect that you haven’t told your eye doctor what you’re doing. Corneal changes can be very gradual, and if your doctor thinks/you tell your doctor that you’re following the instructions properly, the doc might make the error of taking you at your word and not checking closely for what might be happening to your eye.

You might be lucky for now, you might be lucky the rest of your life. But if you’re not, that’s an awful lot of hassle just to avoid taking out your contacts and cleaning them properly.

I wore the same contacts almost through my entire 20’s and basically stopped because someone I talked to said that was strange. I didn’t take them out in over 9 years and didn’t experience any eye issues.

I can’t remember the name of the contacts I had at the time as I was under my parents insurance and since then have had my own insurance and therefore received a new brand upon doing eye inspections. My Dr. has a joke he tells me every year: if it wasn’t for the fact that I couldn’t see he’d say I have excellent and healthy eyes… har har har.

I do think it was due to that particular brand and my youth though as I’ve been unable to really wear contacts for even a percentage of that amount of time since then.

I wore Night And Days for a few years. Leave them in for a few weeks and swap them for a new pair. After a few years (probably 3-5, don’t remember), I was having some type of issue with my eyes. I don’t remember exactly what it was, I think maybe they were taking a half a second or so to refocus when looking at things that were at different distances. Like, the car in front of me and then looking at a speed limit sign 100 feet away.

In any case, the eye doc mentioned that she had the same problems when she used to wear the same lenses. It cleared up pretty quickly when I stopped wearing them 24 hours a day. But it was nice to be able to see, perfectly, all the time. I still miss that.

The other thing she had me do was swap out my contact lens solution. She asked me what kind I use and I told her that I just grab whatever’s the cheapest, it’s all saline, right? When she pushed me for the actual brand, I told her it was the generic stuff at [store I was shopping at when I needed some].
Apparently, and I never knew this, (and it may not be true anymore), there was two kinds on the market. A cheap name brands and most of the generics, and there was Opti-Free as well as few generics with the same formula. Opti Free was meant for hydrogel lenses, using the other stuff with hydrogel lenses supposedly caused issues. *

In addition to going back to Opti Free, she also got me started on Clear Care. That alone probably made the biggest difference in my comfort while wearing contacts. In fact, even to this day, if I convince someone to try Clear Care, the next time I see them they’ll mention that their lenses felt brand new after using it. It really makes a big difference.
TL;DR, take them out every night, don’t sleep with them in, switch to Clear Care.
Maybe look into lasik.

*I really don’t remember all the details, it was a long time ago.

You kept your contacts in for SIX MONTHS??? In China, according to news reports, a young woman went blind after doing the same - an amoeba ate at her eyes: Student goes blind after keeping her contact lenses in for six months and microscopic bug EATS her eyeballs | Daily Mail Online

The linked article gives a lot of details about what she had done wrong and what should have been done instead. I think it would be more than adviseable to start regularly removing your contacts.

Edit: just found another article about a woman who went legally blind in one ey after swimming and showering with her contacts. Haven’t read the whole thing, but the full article may provide more context: Another Person Goes Blind After Wearing Contacts in the Shower | Live Science

I have never understood the desire to leave contacts in for extended periods, and I’ve been a contacts wearer for more than 20 years. Take them out at night, insert them in the morning. Wash your hands every time before fooling with them. It’s not difficult, it’s not a big deal.

No issues thus far for me- no eye infections or anything like that.

And I’ll chime in with another endorsement for Clear Care (or other peroxide-based cleaning/disinfection products)- it really does make a difference in how your lenses feel.

I once asked my ophthalmologist if I could wear my contacts for several days at a time. He said, “you could wear your socks for several days at a time too, but it’s not a good idea.”

I got bruises on my cornea from wearing weeklies (I think that’s what they were called, back in the 1990s). If I had kept on wearing contacts the bruises would have turned into holes.

Or something like that. I stopped wearing contacts.

This thread is a 14 year old zombie.

Anyway, things have changed. I wore contacts for many years, then got Lasik. Now decades later I need one for one eye. Helps for reading. It is multi focal so work both up close and at distance. Amazing stuff. I don’t need reading or distance glasses.

And here’s the important part, they are disposable. No cleaning, no storage, no worries. I just put a new one in every day. Costs a little over a dollar a day.