What Happens If You Never Take Your Contacts Out?
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TVTranscript
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]