Contact Lenses That
Enhance Sports Performance
Contact lenses enhance sports performance in many ways, such as providing a wider field of view than eyeglasses.
More than half of American adults have vision problems such as nearsightedness, farsightedness or astigmatism and need corrective lenses. Many athletes who fall into this category choose contact lenses because of the competitive advantage they can provide.
Even if you've worn contact lenses in the past and found they weren't that comfortable for you after a long day at the office, you could try them part-time strictly for sports and recreation.
Advantages of Contact Lenses for Sports
Compared with eyeglasses, contact lenses offer a number of advantages to enhance your vision for sports competition:
- Better peripheral vision. Though sports eyeglasses can be made with large, wraparound-style lenses, most prescription eyeglasses have small, relatively flat lenses and small frames. This significantly limits peripheral vision essential for many sports.
- Unobstructed field of view. Contact lenses also provide a wide, unobstructed field of view, because no eyeglass frames block or distort what you see. You can view more of your surroundings and react faster to objects coming at you or to other players around you. You also can see and react quickly to ground balls or other objects at your feet.
- Less likelihood of fogging up or getting splattered. Unlike eyeglasses, contacts usually remain clear regardless of environment or weather conditions such as rain.
- Less chance of injury. Eyeglasses may break and cause injury if you take a hard hit, but contact lenses won't.
- More stable vision. When you wear eyeglasses, you can feel frames move slightly on your face with each stride. And you can have vision disturbances with eyeglasses when you run. With contact lenses, you also don't need to worry about eyeglasses sliding down your nose or falling off.
- Better compatibility with safety equipment. For sports that require headgear or protective goggles, contact lenses don't interfere with the fit or comfort of these safety devices.
Even better, with daily disposable contact lenses, you don't have to worry about daily lens care and storage. Wear the lenses for your game or for a day of fun, and then simply throw them away. Also, some daily disposable lenses are available now that correct astigmatism.
RGP Contacts for Sports
Though most athletes who need corrective lenses wear soft contacts, rigid gas permeable lenses are also an option. These contacts, also called RGP or GP lenses, are designed for full-time wear and have several advantages over soft contact lenses:
- Because GP lenses are rigid, they keep their shape on your eye. This allows better correction of astigmatism and other corneal abnormalities, often creating sharper vision.
- GP lenses let more oxygen reach your eyes than most soft lenses do and therefore may offer better comfort for longer periods of wear.
- Because the surface of GP lenses is hard, debris doesn't accumulate as easily on these lenses. So they stay cleaner longer.
- Gas permeable lenses don't absorb tears from your eyes like soft lenses do, so you don't have to worry as much about dry eyes.
But GP lenses have some drawbacks, too. Because they are rigid, it takes longer to adapt to wearing the lenses, and it's usually difficult to wear them on a part-time basis for sports. You must commit to adapting to and wearing gas permeable lenses full-time for best results.
Also, GP lenses are significantly smaller in diameter than soft lenses, which increases the possibility that they could be dislodged from the eye during contact sports. If this becomes a problem, your eye doctor can fit you with a custom-made GP lens with a larger diameter to reduce the risk of the lenses getting dislodged.
Contact Lenses, Tints and UV Protection
A now discontinued line of contact lenses was available in two light-altering tints: amber and gray-green. According to the company that produced them, amber lenses were superior for fast-moving ball sports such as baseball, softball, soccer and tennis. Gray-green lenses were ideal for sports played in bright sunlight, such as golf, running and biking, where glare was the primary concern.
While these lenses are no longer available, you could ask your eye doctor if it's possible to add custom tinting to your usual contact lenses. Though this would be more costly, some companies will provide special tinting services for some brands of soft contact lenses.
Examples of companies that provide custom contact lens tinting include Adventures in Color Technology Inc., Marietta Vision and Custom Color Contacts Inc.
Many brands of soft contact lenses provide some level of protection against ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun, which can be harmful to your eyes and the skin on your face. However, this protection is limited to the area of your eye covered by the lenses. Wearing UV-blocking contacts still leaves portions of your eyes and the delicate skin of your eyelids vulnerable to the sun.
For this reason, even though it is an advantage if your contact lenses block UV, it remains important to wear sports eyewear that provides 100 percent UV protection for all outdoor sports. Hats help, too, because they cover the top opening between sunglasses and your face.
For sports such as tennis, contact lenses provide better peripheral vision than eyeglasses. But you'll need the UV protection of sunglasses if you play outdoors.
Convenience and Comfort of Sports Contact Lenses
Many people wear contact lenses for sports, even if they prefer eyeglasses at work and for other daily activities. Contact lenses also offer more natural vision, with no unwanted changes in image sizes that eyeglasses sometimes produce.
Sports vision specialists report that athletes as a group are not as diligent about cleaning their lenses as the general contact lens-wearing population, although we have found no statistics on this. In addition, some outdoor activities such as camping, overnight sailing and hunting make lens cleaning inconvenient. For this group, daily disposable soft contact lenses are the most convenient option, because they don't require a cleaning regimen.
Dry eyes are a problem for cold-weather athletes, such as skiers, and for players who keep their eyes open without blinking, such as hockey goalies and racquetball players. For this problem, GP contact lenses may be better. Taking oral supplements such as omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil or flaxseed oil also may help alleviate dry eye for contact lens wearers.
But the best eyewear for dry eyes is eyeglasses, because they don't rest directly on the eye and they reduce evaporation of tears by shielding your eyes from direct exposure to wind.
Many athletes don't enjoy wearing glasses, because they can fog up or slip down. However, for sports like basketball, prescription polycarbonate goggles with a wraparound strap may be a better solution than contact lenses because they provide eye protection.
Orthokeratology: Another Sports Vision Correction Option
If you have been unsuccessful wearing contact lenses in the past or you prefer not to wear contacts during sports for some other reason, orthokeratology may be a good option. Also called ortho-k, orthokeratology is the wearing of specially designed gas permeable contact lenses at night while you sleep to reshape your eyes for good vision without glasses or contacts during the day.
Ortho-k may be an especially good option if you want to eliminate your need for corrective eyewear but you aren't a good candidate for LASIK or other vision correction surgery. Read more about orthokeratology for athletes.
Which Option is Best for You? Ask a Sports Vision Expert
Choosing just the right vision correction for sports and recreation requires a lot of thought. Because more people are becoming active during their leisure time and because school and professional sports are becoming more competitive, the demand for sports vision expertise in the area of contact lenses and eyewear is rising. Try visiting a sports vision specialist to help you choose the best solution for you. 
[Page updated January 2009]
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