Tips For Traveling With Contact Lenses And Glasses
Whether you have plans for a spontaneous weekend getaway or a month-long outing abroad, it's essential to prepare and pack accordingly for your trip. If you wear contact lenses or glasses, you'll need to give some thought specifically to how you will handle your vision needs during the trip.
Whether your trip is for business or pleasure, being away makes it easy to slip out of your typical everyday routine. Perhaps you skip your daily exercises. Maybe you overindulge more in food and fun than usual. You may even forget to follow your routine for wearing and caring for your contact lenses and glasses.
Unfortunately, relaxing with regards to your contact lens routine could result in health problems, including an eye infection.
Generally speaking, traveling with glasses and contacts can be a pain. They're delicate, and you need to clean them regularly. If you lose them or damage them, finding replacements can be troublesome. But if you wear them and travel consistently, it's something that you'll have to learn to manage. This article seeks to make the task a little easier. Below you'll find some tips and tricks to make traveling with glasses and contact lenses more straightforward and less troublesome.
Always carry a copy of your contact lens and glasses prescription
Carry a copy of your glasses and contact lenses prescription in your toiletry bag or a contact lens travel case. It's also recommended to scan the prescription and store it in the cloud or email it to yourself so you can always access it with an internet connection. Or save a copy on your smartphone for easy access.
Oplee™ Travel Contact Lens Kit
If worst comes to worst and you have to purchase another pair while you're away, having the prescription handy makes the procedure much more manageable. The last thing you'll want to do while away is to go to an eye doctor who may or may not speak your native language and try to get a new prescription.
Ensure your prescription is up to date before leaving on your trip
Most countries will require a valid and up-to-date prescription to sell you glasses or contact lenses. For instance, in the United States, prescriptions for corrective contact lenses, for the most part, are valid for two years. After the prescription expires, you'll need to return to your eye doctor for an exam.
Travel with daily disposables
While they tend to be more expensive, daily disposable contact lenses offer more convenience while traveling than extended wear contact lenses. As the name implies, daily disposables are thrown out at the end of the day, and a new fresh pair used the next day. This means no need to carry along the accessories needed with extended wear contact lenses, such as contact lens solution and a contact lens case. Although using a contact lens travel kit can undoubtedly help store your daily contact lenses, use the mirror to put in your contact lenses, and keep rewetting drops handy just in case they're needed.
Know the travel security rules
Regardless of whether you're traveling to Boston or Budapest, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) guidelines must be followed. TSA allows contact lenses in both carry-on and checked bags, but the contact lens solution is another story. For checked bags, full-size contact lens solution bottles are acceptable. But for carry-on bags, only travel-sized contact lens solution bottles (less than 3.4 fluid ounces) are permitted. Fortunately, most major manufacturers of contact lens solution make convenient travel-sized bottles for purchase. These are often available in airport shops. There are also contact lens travel kits available specifically designed to carry these smaller travel-sized bottles in addition to other required contact lens accessories.
Oplee™ Travel Contact Lens Kit
Use a hard shell glasses case
It would be best to use a hard shell glasses case. Hard cases shield your glasses from getting scratched or squashed while you're not wearing them. With a hard case, you can toss your glasses into your backpack or bag without worrying about scratching the lenses or twisting the frames. You can also store a lens cleaning cloth in your hard case.
Try not to wear your contact lenses constantly
Most eye doctors suggest that you don't wear your contacts for more than 14-16 hours out of each day. While traveling, it's easy to overwear them. Perhaps you're on a long flight or train ride and can't take them off. Maybe you got up early to catch a sunrise, and you're remaining out late having a few beverages. Many people simply spend more time trying to make the most of their trip and less time sleeping. Unfortunately, this can cause issues.
To avoid contact lens overwear, give your eyes a break and wear your glasses. For long flights and train rides, it's preferable to have the option to sleep and not worry about your contacts drying out or causing harm to your eyes from sleeping in them. During times like these, you should simply wear glasses. Having a contact lens travel kit can come in handy in these situations, as it allows for the ability to swap from contacts to glasses on the go.
Oplee™ Travel Contact Lens Kit
Carry a spare pair of glasses and extra contact lenses while traveling
When traveling, it's always a good idea to carry a spare pair of glasses just in case your primary pair are broken or lost. There are even dual compartment glasses cases with two compartments for glasses, making it easy to carry a backup pair.
Along those same lines, it's also a good idea to carry spare contact lenses. For example, a contact lens can easily be dropped while putting them in, and the transparency of the lens makes it exceedingly difficult to find it once dropped. And of course, contact lens cases are small and can easily be misplaced as well. So be prepared and pack a spare!