Sometime over the summer, no-rub soft contact solution virtually disappeared from store shelves. The only brand still available is Opti Free, which costs twice as much as the three store brands I used to buy. Bausch & Lomb doesn’t appear to make it anymore either.
What’s the story?
The FDA ordered manufacturers to stop marketing their solutions as no-rub. The rule was proposed in 2009 but not adopted until this year for reasons that escape me. They might have redrafted the rule a lot; usually there is a 30-90 day “notice and comment” period following each draft.
Older thread with a recent zombification which may or may not be relevant.
I don’t mean to hijack, but can someone tell me what happened to plain old saline solution? I used to wear contacts and I thought I remembered buying a big bottle of Walmart brand (~20 ounces) for I thought $1.99. Now I haven’t needed this for probably 10 years as I got LASIK, but I had a girlfriend who was always forgetting hers so I went to buy some and I checked several stores and could only find stuff with other stuff in it - and like 3-5x as expensive with smaller bottles.
I’d like to have stuff for guests - so what is the catch all stuff I should have on hand for people that wear contacts? I bought some re-nu “fresh” by Bausch & Lomb and it has Poloxamine, Dymed, Hydranate in it. I’ve never heard of these.
I thought I only remembered using saline solution, but I do have vague memories of something with “enzymes” or the like and rubbing them. I originally used ones that lasted for six months and then switched to like two weeks and then I had disposibles - I loved the disposibles - as they seemed cheap and I could just keep extra in my jacket/car in case I had an issue.
Is what I bought good for all types of contacts (I have no idea what new types are on the market in the last 10 years)? I mainly want something for people that have a problem with their contacts and need to rinse it off after they get it out of their eye - and something for them to be able to store it overnight (I already have a sealed package of three contact lens cases).
Did they really used to sell something that was plain saline solution - or is my memory bad?
What should I have bought to achieve the goals I set out in number 1 above - and where do you find it?
AFAIK, you can still get plain saline contact rinse at Walgreens.
Saline was/is used for storage and rinsing. The enzyme solution was a weekly thing that cleaned any gunk off of them completely. I wear mine now so rarely that I haven’t actually even looked for any of the accessories in a couple of years.
I should have thought that enzymes able to dissolve gunk off contact lenses (which is likely to be mostly protein), would also be able to dissolve the cornea of your eye. :eek:
They are. You had to wash the contacts in saline or cleaning solution after using an enzymatic cleaner.
There were several different tonics/solutions but the one I remember using the most was take out the lens (after washing hands) over a white towel (in case it fell off of your finger - white is an easier background to see them on), give a quick squirt of saline, rub in a few drops of enzyme remover, rinse in saline, then store in the bottle (remembering L/R) until the next day.
Later on I just took them out and put in the solution (still remembering L/R) and they were good to put back in the next day.
Pretty sure they just changed the name to “all purpose” solution.
I take my lenses out every evening, place them in the lens holder with the “all purpose” solution, put them back in the next morning. I repeat this process for about 2 weeks, then throw away the lenses, and put in a new pair the next morning.
Yes, there really was “saline solution”.
Dealing with contact lenses in the old days:
Once a week, use daily cleaner and rinse as usual, but put them in a weekly cleaner, which had
4) An enzyme removing tablet, dropped in
5) A bottle full of basically hydrogen peroxide. The lenses went in a gizmo that dunked the lenses in it overnight, the gizmo had
6) A platinum coated disc to decompose the peroxide
Despite all of this, your lenses would get coated with protein and be like looking through cataracts, so if you hadn’t lost or ripped one in a few months you’d have to replace it anyway.
The new way:
It’s unlikely you’ll find pure saline – it’s probably going to have some kind of preservative. However, I use this CVS Saline Solution for Sensitive Eyes which is pretty close to plain saline solution and is only about $5 for two 12 oz bottles.
I’ve worn soft contacts for over 30 years. Started with daily wear, you had to take them out at night, use the ‘rubbing’ cleaning solution, then rinse them off with saline, then put them in a case with saline and put the case in a heat-sterilization device overnight. Plus you were supposed to use the fizzy, enzyme removing cleaning tablets once a month. I know this sounds like a huge pain in the ass, but for me at least ***anything ***was better than wearing glasses!
After a few years I switched to extended wear lenses. You just never took them out (i.e. you slept with them in). You needed to use re-wetting drops every morning but otherwise they were great, no rubbing-cleaning solution or heat sterilization at all. Turned out if you kept your dirty fingers off them they stayed pretty clean on their own. However it also turned out that they were kinda bad for your eyes (wearing them 24/7 deprived them of oxygen).
Eventually contacts got cheap enough that they introduced disposables lenses. If you slept in them you could wear them for a week, if you didn’t they would last two weeks. But taking them out at night isn’t the pain that the old daily-wear ones were because you don’t use any rubbing-cleaning solution or rinsing or heat sterilization. You just take them out and put them in a case with ‘Multi-Purpose Solution’ overnight. Essentially, because you throw them away every two weeks, you don’t have to worry about daily cleaning & rinsing or enzyme cleaning etc. The lenses simply don’t have time to get ‘dirty’ in the short time (two weeks) that you wear them.
Anyway, I assume this is why cleaning and enzyme solutions (and plain saline) aren’t very popular anymore, because most people wear disposables now. And the only thing you need to use with them is the ‘Multi-Purpose Solution’.