When to Replace Your Contact Lenses, and What Happens When They Expire

It's easy to take contact lenses for granted. They're so convenient and accessible that many of us pop them in each morning without a second thought. In reality, they're a relatively new medical marvel -- the first modern plastic contact lens wasn't introduced until almost 1950. Or, as Dr. Robert Kinast puts it, "We think of contact lenses as being so normal, but 100 years ago, nobody walked around with little pieces of plastic over their eyes." Dr. Kinast, the vice chair of ophthalmology at Legacy Devers Eye Institute and co-founder of GentleDrop, says, "Contact lenses are foreign bodies and should be treated with respect." To that end, we talked with eye experts to explain how to care for contact lenses and when to replace them. How long do contacts last? The lifespan of your contact lenses depends on a few factors. Dr. Meenal Agarwal, optometrist and podcast host, explains, "Soft daily disposables are single-use, so you need to discard them after one day." At the other end of the ... Read full article.