Blinking

See a slide-show with sound about blinking by clicking here. (~2.5 MB) (PowerPoint Viewer required)

Blinking is one of the main reasons why contact lenses work! With your blinking you are doing several things. First and most important, you are making the lens move up and down and in and out with your blinks. When that occurs, new oxygen and fluid are replacing the old underneath the lens, therefore, keeping the corneal healthy. Without blinking, this cannot be accomplished with any type of contact lens. Second, blinking cleans the lens just like a windshield wiper cleans the car windshield. Third, blinking keeps the lens in position and provides good vision.

Some causes of bad blinking are not wearing glasses, wearing an old prescription and squinting to compensate, or by wearing scratched contact lenses or lenses that do not fit properly. Another example of this is that people who should be wearing sunglasses and do not, will learn to squint.

Contact lens wearers usually go through three phases of blinking:

1st. Adaptation to contact lenses: frequent and deliberate or sudden and deliberate blinking.

2nd. Normal phase: two to four weeks later.

3rd. Infrequent and/or Partial blinking: Infrequently and/or partially blinking is when the top lid just flickers. This leads to a syndrome of fogging, red eyes at the 3 and 9 o’clock areas of the whites of the eyes, and yellow plaques developing in these areas. This is because these areas are drying from exposure and the blood vessels enlarge to bring more fluids in to moisten the area.

There are several things to do to improve blinking:

It will take some time to change this habit because it has taken some years to develop, plus it is an involuntary process and those are hard to change. The patient should write down on a piece of paper ten specific times when they are going to practice blinking each day. (At stop lights, while brushing teeth, during TV, commercials, etc.) This will enable frequent, specific times throughout the day to practice.

Each practice should involve 10 blinks.

• Blinking should be done to the count of the three (1) close the eye by touching the top lid to the bottom lid (2) pause (3) open again. This will seem a little exaggerated and strange at first, but once you learn to do this it will come naturally.
• You should blink about 15 times a minute.
• Occasionally place your finger on the outside corner of your lid and blink. With practice you will not feel the pulling, which means it will look natural.
• Watch actors on TV and notice that they blink, but it does not draw attention.

The whole goal of wearing contact lenses is to not appear as though you do. You must practice this so you will have a natural involuntary blink and appearance.