What Happens If You Never Take Your Contacts Out?

WHAT IF

Transcript

00:00 How sick would you get

00:05 if you never took your contacts out?

00:08 You can probably imagine the discomfort

00:10 that would come from leaving them in for days.

00:12 But what about weeks?

00:15 Or months?

00:16 Or even years?

00:19 How much would you damage your vision?

00:22 Could you lose your eyes?

00:25 And why might it cause you to have diarrhea?

00:30 This is WHAT IF,

00:31 and here's what would happen

00:33 if you never took your contacts out.

00:36 Contact lenses stay on your eyes

00:41 by sticking to the thin layer of tear fluid

00:44 found on the surface of the eye.

00:47 This fluid is produced every time you blink,

00:50 and it's responsible for washing away

00:52 any dirt that might become stuck to a lens.

00:56 If you were to wear your contact lenses

00:58 while you sleep,

00:59 there'd be no blinking going on

01:01 to keep things clean.

01:03 Bacteria would start to build up on the lens,

01:06 and you'd wake up with stinging red eyes.

01:09 And that's just after day one.

01:12 How much worse would things get?

01:15 The struggle to remember to take out

01:19 and clean your contacts every night

01:21 is more common than you might think.

01:23 In the United States alone,

01:25 approximately 30 to 45 million people

01:28 wear contact lenses.

01:30 Most people wear them to improve their vision.

01:33 Some people wear them to change their eye color.

01:36 And some wear them for protection

01:38 from ultraviolet rays.

01:41 But no matter why you wear them,

01:43 you still have to clean and disinfect them

01:46 on a regular basis.

01:48 And that's where the danger would come in

01:50 to never taking your contacts out.

01:52 It's not the foreign object on your eye

01:54 that would cause you the most problems.

01:56 It's what would be growing on that object.

02:00 If you never cleaned your contacts,

02:03 then protein deposits,

02:04 allergens,

02:05 and microorganisms would build up on the lens,

02:08 leading to blurred vision.

02:10 The bacteria building up on your eye

02:12 could lead to something called keratitis.

02:15 That's an infection of the dome-shaped window

02:18 of the eye known as the cornea.

02:20 In severe cases,

02:22 keratitis can lead to corneal scarring,

02:24 vision loss,

02:25 and complete blindness.

02:28 And even if you're one of the lucky cases,

02:31 you'd still be suffering

02:32 from a sensitivity to light,

02:34 redness of the eyes,

02:35 tearing,

02:36 and various degrees of pain and discomfort.

02:42 Once symptoms started to appear,

02:44 there'd be no turning back.

02:46 Unless you remove your contacts,

02:48 every day would be worse than the day before.

02:51 You'd constantly be rubbing your red, squinted eyes,

02:55 suffering from headaches,

02:56 and streams of uncontrollable tears

02:59 would be gushing down your cheeks.

03:01 It's safe to say that anyone who kept their contacts in

03:04 all the time would be pretty irritable.

03:07 Oh, and some of them could be pooping their pants too.

03:11 But more on that in a second.

03:13 With all the chaos taking place in your eyes,

03:16 you wouldn't be able to drive,

03:18 play sports,

03:18 or read.

03:20 Even your TV and computer screens

03:22 would just be a big blur of colors.

03:25 Sure, you could just keep treating your eye infections

03:28 with antibiotics.

03:30 But that would have its own set of problems.

03:33 Since prolonged exposure to antibiotics

03:36 can result in antibiotic resistance,

03:39 the antibiotics could also disrupt

03:41 the natural balance of good and bad bacteria in your body.

03:45 The good bacteria that help with our digestion

03:48 could be obliterated,

03:49 leaving the bad bacteria to take over our intestines.

03:53 If this happens,

03:54 you're going to need to use your blurred vision

03:57 to find a toilet quickly,

03:58 because it usually results in extreme diarrhea.

04:03 So maybe you should just follow the instructions

04:06 on your contacts and clean them regularly.

04:09 You don't want to screw up the one pair of eyes

04:11 that you've got.

04:13 Unless you could just grow new ones.

04:17 But that's a topic for another WHAT IF.

04:21 [MUSIC]

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