Simple Tips on How to Travel With Contact Lenses

While contact lenses are safely worn by millions of people across the world every day, they bring a risk of eye infection and injury. In fact, the eyes are one of the most delicate and vulnerable parts of the body and we should always try our best to protect them. The best way to avoid injury and eye infections is to follow proper contact lens care guidelines especially when we are traveling. Here are a few simple pieces of advice on how to travel with contact lenses:

You should always take extra pairs of lenses

There is nothing worse than traveling somewhere across the Globe and realizing we’ve run out of contact lenses for the vacation. We should always make sure that there are enough extra pairs of contact lenses for your entire trip. Losing your lenses while we are traveling is very easy so we should always make sure that there are enough extra lenses packed and rewetting drops in your carry-on. (1)

Don’t forget to pack some of your contact lenses in your overnight bag

There is nothing more unpleasant than finding out that your contact lenses have ended up in another undesired destination. Because of this reason you should always be precautions and allocate some of your contact lens supply to your carry-on bag. Keeping contact lenses with you at all times is some kind of travel insurance in bad scenarios such as separating from your baggage.

You Should Limit Wearing Contact Lens during a Flight

Another thing you should also try is to limit wearing contact lenses during long flights and there is a good reason behind this theory. Disposable contact lenses are made with a large amount of water and some of them include even 70% of water. During a flight, our skin and eyes experience dryness due to the dry atmosphere in the plane.  In the majority of air-conditioned buildings, the humidity in the atmosphere is between 35% and 65%, while in an airplane the average amount of water in the atmosphere could get as low as 25%. These factors could affect your contact lenses to dry out and distort. The most common recommendation is to not wear contact lenses during long flights and absolutely to take them off if you are planning to sleep.

Always try to keep them clean

We travel to different places and locations and there is a significant potential for picking up some kind of bacteria or other foreign matter from our fingertips and hangs. We previously explained that being exposed to air-conditioned environments could easily dry out our contact lenses. Because of this, it’s easier to transfer any microscopic matter from your hands into your eyes. In order to maintain the sterility of your eye environment, you should try always to keep hand sanitizer to ensure that before you come across your lenses your fingertips are clean. Additionally, if you want to avoid finger contact with your eyes as much as possible, maybe you should try to carry a compact mirror to help target contact lens insertion, extraction, and adjustment. (2)

Give your eyes a vacation, too

Moreover, one very significant thing you should consider is to give your eyes a rest as well. While traveling we come across different time zones and surroundings and many of us get sub-optimal quality and quantity of sleep, which can affect the health and comfort of our eyes. Taking a day off from wearing contact lenses, sleeping 8 to 10 hours per day and keeping your body hydrated, could make a crucial difference to your contact lens experience while vacationing.