Sports and other active hobbies are a big part of how I relate to patients and how I make decisions about what to prescribe for their vision needs. Although we often think about “sports” or “athletes” in relation to high school, college, or professional participants in organized team sports, those terms can be defined much more broadly. We have baseball and soccer players where I practice in Boise, Idaho, but I also have many patients who go mountain biking, hiking, or hunting—and all of them have visual needs that can best be served by contact lenses.
Incorporating sport-based contact lenses into a practice requires asking questions and really listening to the answers. Our patient intake form specifically asks what our patients do for work and what hobbies and activities they enjoy outside of work. During my exam, I often dig a little deeper into these topics—partly because I enjoy getting to know my patients better, but also because it helps me better target my clinical recommendations. I ask patients about trips or any big plans over the next year. Maybe they spend a lot of time at the computer for their accounting job, but they are planning a 3-week hiking trip in a few months. That’s a sporting activity that contact lenses can help with!
Here are 5 reasons I recommend contact lenses for active patients:
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They provide a full field of vision. Contact lenses allow athletes to see the ball and their teammates without spectacle frames getting in the way.
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No fogging up. Temperature changes or sweat can cause glasses to fog up. With contact lenses though, patients don’t have to worry about this, which means they can enjoy clear vision and stay focused on their sport or activity.
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Stability during runs, jumps, and backflips. Contact lenses stay put on the eyes, no matter how much the wearer moves. Patients don’t have to worry about them falling off, which is a relief for athletes playing contact sports like football and basketball.
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Lenses won’t get in the way of sports equipment. Whether we’re talking about a hockey mask, wraparound sunglasses in baseball, or a mountain biking helmet, contact lenses give patients the freedom to wear headgear without worrying about whether or not their glasses will fit underneath.
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Some contact lens brands offer built-in UV protection, which is a great benefit (in addition to sunglasses and a hat) for patients who spend time doing outdoor sports or activities like camping and hiking.
These advantages are available to patients who wear contact lenses full time, but part-time wearers who are comfortable in glasses when they are not actively engaging in their sport can also appreciate them. Part-time wear candidates include that person who goes on a few hiking or ski trips a year, or who wants to wear lenses just for running a couple days a week. Daily disposable lenses are the perfect choice for part-time wear because we don’t need to worry that the lenses have been sitting in solution for too long. As a very low myope, I wear progressive spectacles in the office. Outdoors, when I’m not doing near work, I don’t really need correction, but I like to wear contact lenses for the extra clarity they provide when I go mountain biking. I tell patients, “I don't know what it would do for your sport, but there are many situations where contact lenses might be helpful even if you don’t wear them full time.”
With a new prescription, I give patients enough trial lenses to get them through at least 2 games or runs or rounds of golf so they can really judge whether the lenses are right for the focal distance they want and for other visual and comfort needs. A part-time prescription can also be useful for patients who have an event or a trip coming up later in the year, so I always encourage them to think beyond the current season.
In fact, I am a huge fan of multiprescribing. If a patient comes in wearing a 2-week reusable contact lens and doesn’t want to completely transition away from that, I will still offer them a daily replacement product as a trial and I'll write them 2 prescriptions so they can fill either one (or both). If cost is a factor, I let them know they can always get a 90-pack of daily disposable lenses for each eye to get them through their outdoor summer activities.
Raise the Topic Early
I start talking about the benefits of contact lenses with school-age kids and their parents. For this age group, sports are often the first entrée to wearing contact lenses, but other activities can be just as important. I fit a young teen who loved to act in school plays but felt that her glasses restricted the kinds of roles she could play. She was thrilled to start wearing contact lenses and now tells me all about the productions she is acting in when she comes in for her annual exams.
Kids can be fit in contact lenses as early as 7 or 8 years old, as long as their parents are willing to supervise them. Daily disposable lenses obviously make the supervision much simpler. I tell parents that kids are capable of wearing contact lenses unsupervised when they can make their own beds, brush their teeth, and do their homework without being nagged. Some of the kids I fit earliest in contact lenses are those patients with outlier prescriptions, like high hyperopes or high astigmats, though their prescriptions may not come in a daily disposable option. Although sports are often the initial motivator, these young patients are just so grateful to not have to wear their high-magnification, cosmetically unappealing glasses that they become very dedicated contact lens wearers.
I find that there are tremendous word-of-mouth referral benefits when a child on a sports team starts wearing contact lenses for the first time. The parents of other players on the team notice that Johnny isn’t wearing glasses and they talk about it on the sidelines. In visually demanding sports like baseball or tennis, parents are often invested in giving their young athlete the extra edge, and a crisp, full field of vision without glasses seems like an obvious advantage.
Don’t Assume Adults Aren’t Interested
A lot of people assume that an adult in glasses doesn’t want to wear contact lenses, but many of them have never even been offered the option. We use visual cues in the practice, such as a video loop in the waiting area and posters in the exam room, to build awareness about contact lens options patients might not know about, such as daily disposable lenses for sports, contact lenses with blue light filtering, or myopia control lenses for children. Patients will bring up what they saw, which gives me an opportunity to educate them about these options.
When I see an adult patient who is new to my practice, I always discuss glasses, contact lenses, and surgical solutions, and I want patients to understand that they aren’t limited to just one of those options. Right now, I have several adult patients who have taken up pickleball and are suddenly interested in contact lenses, even though they haven’t worn them for 20 years, because they think it will make them more competitive on the pickleball court.
With adults who are passionate about a sport or hobby, it often resonates with them to approach contact lenses almost like a piece of equipment for their sport. For many people, buying a package of multifocal daily disposable lenses is no different than spending money on a high-end racket or specialized cycling shoes.
Focus on Functional Gains
When I recommend contact lenses for a patient, I focus on how it will improve their visual function for and enjoyment of the activities that matter to them. Functional gains may be made by improving peripheral vision, for example, but the impact on function is highly activity dependent.
Golfers often enjoy wearing contact lenses for the same reasons that apply to other sports: no glasses slipping around in the heat or getting raindrops on the lenses in a sudden rain shower. Patients have told me that they also appreciate blue-violet light filtering and high wettability and lubricity features as well, which helps achieve my goal for any patient in a contact lens—that they not notice the lens at all. When the lens material and fit are good, the contact lens just kind of fades into the background, and the wearer can focus on their golf game (or whatever else they are doing) instead of their ocular discomfort. That alone can boost performance.
Some sports require truly creative problem solving to find the right contact lens. For example, I recently fit a 60-year-old fencer who had never worn contact lenses before. His entire sport takes place within a 3- to 10-foot range, which is a visual challenge for a presbyope. I fit him in multifocal lenses, but backed off on the recommended add power from the fit guide to optimize his vision for his sport. He should be able to see his cell phone and anything farther away, but will need reading glasses if he wants to read small font. He’ll be testing this prescription out in an upcoming tournament to see if it is the right choice for his uniquely intermediate-dominant sport.
Surprisingly, it is not uncommon for me to encounter adults who have been wearing spherical lenses for years even though they have significant astigmatism. I will usually walk these patients out to my glass front door and have them look across the store with their habitual lenses and then show them how the same view would look with a toric loose-lens correction over that, so they can see the difference in clarity. Simply telling them I can make their vision better is not as effective as showing them the difference, especially if they have been undercorrected for a long time. These patients will almost always experience better visual quality for their sports or activities when their astigmatism is properly corrected with a toric lens. If their activities require a lot of head movements, a toric lens with blink-stabilized design that is more resistant to the effects of gravity than a ballasted toric design is key so that the lenses aren’t likely to rotate out of focus during active head movements.
Conclusion
Contact lenses are a fun part of optometric practice, in my opinion. I like that they give my patients options for how they see the world. For outdoorsy and athletic people of all ages, contact lenses truly make their visual experience a better one, especially when we can customize the solution to their specific sport or activity. I strongly believe that the ability to meet those needs for good vision in a variety of challenging settings is a major reason that patients come to my practice—and come back again every year. OM
