Eye Health Tips for High School and College Students

Students face special challenges to the eyes when they are under academic performance pressure. 

Lack of sleep, prolonged computer use and long hours studying make for tired eyes that are dry, 
scratchy and achy. 


Prolonged computer use contributes to eye fatigue because you blink less frequently. Less
blinking significantly reduces lubrication in the eye making it feel tired, scratchy and “dry” as a
result. Also eyes are not designed for prolonged focus on a single object, such as the computer.
Remedy: place a note on the computer screen as a reminder to blink and to look away from the
screen and focus on objects in the distance. Looking out a window (20 – 20 – 20 rule: for every
20 minutes of computer work, look away for 20 seconds, and focus on a scene or object at least
20 feet away) is a good break for the eyes. The key is to give your eyes a rest.

“Dry eye” is a common feeling from not giving your eyes enough rest while some people just
naturally do not produce enough tears to keep their eyes healthy and comfortable. Some common
symptoms of dry eye are stinging and burning to the eyes, scratchiness, excessive eye irritation
from smoke or wind and excessive tearing. Remedy: If you have occasional symptoms of dry
eye, you should try eye drops called artificial tears. These are similar to your own tears and help
lubricate the eyes and maintain moisture. For persistent “dry eye,” see your SkyVision doctor.

Contact Lenses and Sleep Deprivation 

When a contact-lens wearer stays awake studying for 18-20 hours or more with their contacts in,
it’s almost the equivalent of sleeping with contacts in, something that Eye M.D.s warn against.
Prolonged wearing of your contact lenses is a problem for people who wear regular hydrogen
lenses, since traditional hydrogels are relatively less permeable to oxygen than newer alternatives
like silicone hydrogels. The eye needs oxygen to keep it healthy. Without regular exposure to
oxygen, the eye’s cornea can become inflamed and the vision blurry. Prolonged contact lens use
can even lead to infections or corneal ulcers that in the worst case can permanently damage
vision.

Sometimes students fall asleep without knowing it (with their contacts in), while studying.
Remedy: Alternate wearing contact lenses with use of eyeglasses during long study periods.
Also, students with irregular sleep patterns can wear contact lenses made of silicon hydrogen, a
new material with improved oxygen permeability, which may reduce risk of infection and
discomfort.

Make sure you have a current prescription for your spare eyeglasses! 

For more information about contact lenses and proper contact care guidelines ask one of the SkyVision doctors.

This article reprinted with permission from the American Academy of Ophthalmology's EyeSmart 
Campaign (www.geteyesmart.org).

Daily Disposable Soft Contacts

Dr. Kaye is our contact lens expert in our Westlake, Ohio Skyvision Center. We recently asked him about advances in contact lenses, and about what his recommedations are for new contact lens patients:

"It's amazing how many new things we have in the contact lens world! More and more people can wear soft contact lenses with great vision and really good comfort. One of our major concerns is always safety. The new one-day disposable contact lenses are the safest type of soft lens yet!

Each day you open a new lens for each eye. The lens is fresh, and it comes out of its package sterile. At night you remove the lenses and throw them away. No need to clean them, and since you throw them away at night they never get a chance to wear out.

One of the problems contact lens patients can have is something called a corneal ulcer, an infection in the window of the eye. These are most often associated with poor lens cleaning, wearing the lenses overnight, or continuing to wear a lens past it's time. With daily disposables all of these potential causes for corneal infections are removed!"

If you live in Cleveland and the surrounding towns come visit Dr. Gregory Kaye at Skyvision Centers in Westlake, right across Crocker Road from Crocker Park to get fit with the latest one-day disposable contact lenses from ProClear or Ciba!

Eye Health and Vision Questions Answered by SkyVision Centers

Wow! Look at all of the posts here on our Skyvision blog! We started out hoping to be helpful to our Skyvision patients as well as our Cleveland neighbors, mostly by talking about the stuff our doctors and staff spend their days discussing in our Westlake office. How are we doing? Are we talking about stuff you are interested in?

How about this? Tell us what kinds of things YOU are interested in. Maybe it's a question about yourself, or maybe someone in your family has an eye disease and you'd like more information. Thinking about LASIK? Perhaps there's an area of research that peaked your interest. Fashion questions for our optical staff?

Really, pretty much anything that's eye or vision related is fair game. You can leave a comment for us here on the blog, or leave a comment on our Skyvision Centers Facebook page (just search for 'Skyvision Centers'). We are on Twitter @drdarrellwhite and @skyvisioncenter, too, if you are a Twitterbug!

Let us know what YOU are interested in, Cleveland!

100% Satisfied

How about that?! 100% of our new patients at SkyVision in the month of May were satisfied with their SkyVision experience. In fact, 99.5% were either very satisfied or EXTREMELY satisfied!

We survey all of our new patients every day to see how their SkyVision Centers experience went. It's very important to us that we not only provide the very best eye care possible, but we also want our patients to have a wonderful experience in the process. We ask each new patient if they would refer friends and family to see us for all of their eyecare needs. In May 90% of our new patients said that they would look for opprotunities to bring up their SkyVision experience so that they could send friends and family to see us!

From the very outset Dr. Darrell White, Dr. Scott Schlegel, and Dr. Gregory Kaye have been striving to create a real, true patient-centered experience. Most medical practices of all kinds are actually built around the needs of the doctors. At SkyVision Centers we think that might be backwards--everything should be centered on our patients. Each of us spends time every day monitoring your experience, from waiting time to inusurance processing, to making sure that you are getting exactly the right care for your particular needs.

So thank you for all of your kind words and your wonderful reviews. We DO want to hear from you directly, not only to tell us how nice your experience was, but definitely also when you think there might be something that we can do better! Here's hoping June is just as successful!

Contact Lens Cardinal Rules

Do you wear contact lenses? Are you thinking about wearing contact lenses? Well, whether you are young or old there are some very important "Cardinal Rules" for contact lens wear, especially if you are wearing the most modern soft contacts. Our contact lens expert is Dr. Greg Kaye, one of the most experienced contact lens eye doctors in all of Cleveland!

Cardinal rule #1 is very simple, and we actually had a previous post on this subject: everyone who wears contact lenses MUST have a back-up pair of glasses that they can wear. If you are getting your very first eye prescription and you want to wear contacts you have to get glasses, too. No matter how old or young you are. Sometimes things happen where you can't wear your contacts, like infections or scratches, and you just have to have a pair of glasses that will allow you to see.

Rule #2 is that every person who wears contact lenses, no matter how much or how little, has to have an appointment with an eye doctor who knows their stuff EVERY YEAR! You may not need a full, dilated exam, but someone needs to check your prescription, your fit, and the health of your cornea (the window to the eye) at least once every year.

The third rule is all about safety: if you get a red or a painful eye TAKE YOUR CONTACT LENSES OUT, put your glasses on, and bring your contact lens and your eye in to see your eye doctor. Don't try to tough it out! Be sure to bring your contact lens in with you, though. Sometimes we can use it to find out why you have a problem.

Dr. White likes to say that there's a rule 3 1/2 for kids: there's no reason for a kid to wear a contact lens overnight. They should ALWAYS take their contacts out before going to bed.

We LOVE contact lenses at Skyvision, and we want you to enjoy them in the safest way possible!

Contact Lens Cardinal Rules

We are HUGE fans of contact lenses here at Skyvision Centers! Like most really good things, though, there are some rules to follow in order to get the most out of your contacts. Here are our "Cardinal Rules"!

1) Everyone who wears contact lenses needs to have a back up pair of glasses that they can wear to do regular things like drive a car. The biggest risk factor for complications from wearing contacts is actually not owning a pair of glasses because people who don't will continue to wear contacts when they shouldn't!

2) Everyone who wears contact lenses needs to see someone who knows how to examine the front of the eye at least once every year. There can be hidden complications or problems caused by your contacts that can only gbe picked up by an eye doctor during an examination.

3) If you have a red or a painful eye you need to take your contact lenses out and bring your contacts AND YOUR EYE to that same eye doctor who knows what they are doing!

Dr. White likes today that there is a rule "3 1/2" for kids: no kid should where a contact lens overnight! No matter what type of contact lens is prescribed a child should sleep WITHOUT wearing contact lenses.

And there you go! Cardinal rules for safe and happy contact lens wear courtesy of Skyvision Centers.

Do You Follow Good Contact Lens Care?

Most contact lens users know about potential complications and believe they follow all the recommended wear and care guidelines, but few actually do, according to new research. The study included 281 patients who visited eye care practitioners in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas and 152 who went to a university eye clinic. Many patients could name a complication related to contact lens use -- 58 percent in the general community and 91 percent at the university clinic.

The most commonly named complications were related to lens comfort/handling and infections, said the researchers, Dr. Danielle Robertson and Dr. H. Dwight Cavanagh of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. The majority of patients also knew important risk factors for contact lens-related complications such as: topping off instead of replacing contact lens solution; exposing lenses to tap water, including wearing them while showering; and poor hygiene practice, according to the study published in the November issue of the journal Optometry and Vision Science.

Overall, 85 percent of the patients believed they followed recommended contact lens wear and care practices. However, the researchers found that the average patient only performed 50 percent of the recommended wear and care practices, and compliance was rated as good for only 2 percent of the patients.

Only one patient (0.4 percent) was fully compliant with all the recommended contact lens wear and care guidelines.

"It is unlikely that further education will change patient behavior,"  the study authors noted in a journal news release, "because most patients already know that failing to follow recommended guidelines can increase their risk of complications."

"New strategies and approaches to effectively modify inherent patient non-compliance are urgently needed," the researchers concluded in the release.

What do YOU think? How can we help contact lens patients to take care of their eyes? Let us know! Leave a comment here, or "Like" us on Facebook and leave your thoughts there.