Wear Your Glasses. Review on Wearing Contact Lens

Why am I asking you to wear your glasses? Well, look at my picture on the left hand side panel. I am wearing my glasses and although I know that I do not look good in my glasses, still I prefer glasses to contact lenses. This debate has been raging in my circle of friends for quite some time now. What should we wear – lenses or glasses? I vote for glasses. Some girls I know will vote for lenses. But at the outset of the review, let me declare that contact lenses are not a long-term solution for your eye care needs.

Thanks to our advertising industry, the contact lens manufacturers have been able to create a giant market for their product. I recall recently watching an advertisement of a contact lens brand(Bausch and Laumb or Acuvue? Sorry, I don’t remember the brand name) where a young Cricketer gets bad performances whenever he wore his glasses but then starts belting the bowlers all over the stadium after wearing contact lenses. Amazing isn’t it? This advertisement can put Sourav Ganguly or Anil Kumble to shame, as they both are known to wear glasses off field. More precisely, in the early part of their careers, both Anil Kumble and Daniel Vettori used to wear glasses(In fact Daniel Vettori still wears glasses). Go on. Ask them, do glasses act as a deterrent to playing Cricket?

Even I have played Cricket, representing my school team and I always wore my glasses. Never mind a few fielding mistakes, I was a hit batsman and a reasonable bowler, quite unlike that dumbo Cricketer of that advertisement.

Why do people wear contact lenses?

It is not too difficult to understand why people wear contact lenses. For a start, people wear contact lenses to do away with their glasses. Contact lens manufacturers claim that lenses give you an all-round vision, quite unlike glasses which provide you with a limited scope of vision. But let me ask a question – do we really need an all-round vision? I mean, all-round vision is useful if we have to look from the corner of our eye. How often do we find ourselves doing that? And if we really need to look from the corner of our eyes, then it is better to turn our face just that little bit to get a clearer vision. Glasses provide us with vision that is suitable enough to let us view everything in the visible spectrum. Users of glasses know its limitations and they do not worry about an all-round vision.

Another use of lenses is to make a fashion statement. People have started using coloured contact lenses to change the colour of their eyes. This is yet another incredible and ridiculous use of lenses. As if clothes, jewellery, footwear, headgear and hairstyle are not enough, people have now started using contact lenses to suit a particular fashion. I find it really amazing to see the pains that people take to look good.

If you really have to look good, then why not wear glasses? Walk into a showroom and you will find plenty of designs and makes of frames for glasses which can actually enhance the beauty of your face. And if you need some inspiration to wear glasses, picture Amitabh Bachchan wearing glasses. I know he looks better without his glasses, but then he looks and feels his age with glasses. Then look at Sania Mirza. Doesn’t she look cute with her glasses on?

In a country like ours, the use of lenses is derogatory for the eyes in the dusty environs of most of the cities as well as the countryside. We often end up wearing sunglasses to protect our eyes(and particularly the lenses) from the heat and dust of the surroundings. Again I have a question – if we really have to wear glasses, then why wear contact lenses in the first place? Instead why not go to an optician and get sunglasses made according to your eye-prescription? And if you don’t want sunglasses, then you can even go for photo chromatic glasses, which can adjust the colour of the glasses according to the intensity of the light of the surroundings.

Contact lenses have too many issues attached to them. I too have used contact lenses some 4 years ago. I can tell you for sure that it is very difficult to place the lens in front of your eye. The how’s and whys of this is very simple. Take a small test for yourself – deliberately place a finger less than an inch in front of your eye. You will involuntarily close your eyes.

When I had used contact lenses, the immediate effect that I noticed was that my right eye started watering profusely, so much so that the lens would get displaced by itself. I went back to the doctor, he suggested some minor adjustments and after his advice, the watering stopped. But then I realized that it is difficult for me to maintain the lenses. Every set of contact lens has to be washed in its liquid solution regularly and kept properly in its containers. Being a college student at that time, I found myself short of time to take care of the lenses. I tried my best to maintain the lenses for a period of time, but then with time constraints, I found myself switching back to glasses. The lesson I learnt was that taking care of contact lenses requires a lot of time and patience, which I found myself short of.

Another issue involved with contact lenses is its cost. A set of disposable contact lens will cost you anything upwards of Rs. 600/-. A set of long-term contact lens will cost you upwards of Rs. 1000/-. Whichever type of lens you may opt for, the cost will keep on increasing, and if your eyes are not able to adjust to it, then all that money goes down the drain.

Using contact lenses is not a joke. It involves putting something alien into your eyes. And more often than not, your eyes will have trouble adjusting to the lenses. It doesn’t matter what type of lenses you are using, if your eyes repel it, then let it be that way. Don’t think of using contact lenses again. Remember, your eyes are precious. They are your windows to the world. Don’t spoil your eyes just to look and feel good. But ultimately, the choice is yours.