Contact lenses offer a huge boost in quality of life. Contacts give people more choice in their overall style than glasses. Even people who like the look of glasses tend to appreciate being able to go without them on occasion. What’s more, contacts don’t interfere with accessories like headphones or hats in the way a pair of glasses might. However, specific types of contacts can also help treat medical issues, such as:

1. Moisturizing daily contacts

It’s estimated that about 50% of the people who stop wearing contact lenses make the decision due to dry eyes. Dry eyes are often a problem in and of themselves. And contacts often make the problem even worse. This isn’t anything inherently wrong with contacts. Instead one simply needs to properly match a patient’s eyes to overall water content within a contact lens. Soft contact lenses are made of hydrogel, which contains water. The higher water content in the lens can cause dryness in one’s eyes though. Rigid, but gas permeable, lenses can help protect an eye from drying out. Moisturizing contacts will also usually cover the entire corneal surface in order to ensure eyes stay moist.

2. Toric contact lenses

Astigmatism occurs when the normally spherical lens of the eye is elongated. The distorted shape of the lens scatters light onto the retina rather than focusing it. A toric lens is specially designed to focus light in a way that compensates for astigmatism.

3. Monovision or regular contact lenses

Monovision lenses are typically prescribed for cases of nearsightedness or farsightedness. These conditions refer to situations where one has trouble seeing things based on distance. However, the term monovision can prove somewhat misleading. The key to a monovision lens’s ability to help vision comes from the fact that eyes work as a pair. It’s true that a monovision lens will only work on a single eye at any given time. But one will typically have a lens in each eye. And the prescription and strength for each eye will also usually differ. The dominant eye is usually used for distance vision. And the non-dominant eye is used for near-focus. By working with the strength of each eye the contact is able to properly compensate for either of these two conditions.

4. Bifocal contacts

Presbyopia might sound like a rare medical condition. However, almost everyone will experience it to some degree within their lifetime. Presbyopia typically begins to manifest between the ages of 40 and 45. While the condition sounds intimidating, it essentially just refers to difficulty focusing on small text in one’s eyes. It’s typically treated with bifocals. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean one has to wear bifocal glasses. Bifocal contact lenses work on a similar principle to bifocal glasses. The contact lens combines two prescriptions into a single lens. One prescription handles distance vision while the other works on one’s ability to focus on nearby objects. This does mean that they’re one of a select few lenses which one needs to learn how to use. People have to get into the habit of looking at things differently depending on distance. Segmented bifocal design uses the lower part of the lens for near vision. Concentric bifocal design lines the entire outer ring of the contact with the near distance prescription. One essentially needs to become used to looking at things through the appropriate part of the lens in order to shift through prescription strength. However, this becomes second nature to most people fairly quickly.