Use Caution with Halloween Contact Lenses

Halloween revelers that are considering making cosmetic decorative contact lenses a part of their costume need to use caution in order to avoid eye safety risks and injury.  Today, more and more people buy decorative contact lenses via over-the-counter outlets to achieve a ghoulish appearance. Although this may complete your costume and be amusing, it can also lead to serious sight threatening problems. What kind of eye health risks does wearing those decorative contact lenses for Halloween cause? To start, wearers could experience scratched corneas, eye infections like “pink eye” and even extremely serious types of blinding infections as a result of a corneal ulcer. Many people do not know that a federal law was passed in 2005, classifying all contact lenses as medical devices and requiring their distribution to licensed eye-care professionals.  Any kind of contact lenses, even cosmetic ones, according to the Food and Drug Administration, necessitate a prescription and appropriate fitting by an eye-care professional. The problem is not that people use decorative, noncorrective contact lenses but that they buy the devices without a prescription through unlicensed vendors on the Internet or at flea markets and specialty shops.

The safe and effective use of contact lenses-whether decorative or not-requires proper fitting and education about their care to prevent the potential for serious eye problems from becoming a reality. If you or a friend would like to learn more about contact lenses of any type including decorative contacts please call Alabama Eye & Cataract Center at 205-930-0930, visit Alabama Eye & Cataract Center or www.facebook.com/michelsonlaservision to schedule an appointment.

Michelson Laser Vision and Alabama Eye & Cataract Center are leading eye care centers in Birmingham located at UAB-Highlands, 1201 11th Avenue S, Suite 501, Birmingham, Alabama 35205.

BOTOX® Mechanism May Help with Type 2 Diabetes

Understanding the mechanism by which BOTOX® works to smooth wrinkles may turn out to be helpful in developing new ways to treat Type 2 Diabetes. BOTOX® Cosmetic is best known as an injection for helping patients smooth fine lines and wrinkles in order to look their best. Not as widely known, is the fact that BOTOX® is also used as treatment for a number of medical conditions. 

These medical conditions include urinary incontinence, migraines, profuse sweating and crossed eyes, to name a few. How does BOTOX® help these conditions? It is effective due to its paralyzing impact on the muscle it is injected into. Specifically, certain proteins called SNARE (Soluble NSF Attachment Protein Receptor) are blocked from functioning. By stopping SNARE proteins from functioning, BOTOX® helps the pancreas secrete insulin, so that blocking these proteins could lead to insulin resistance which is the main characteristic of Type 2 Diabetes. Understanding this mechanism will hopefully provide researchers with new ways to diagnose and treat Type 2 Diabetes in the future.

If you or someone you know is concerned about the risk of diabetes and needs a diabetic eye exam they are encouraged to schedule an eyeexamination at Alabama Eye & Cataract Center in Birmingham by calling 205-930-0930, visiting Alabama Eye & Cataract Center or Facebook.com/MichelsonLaserVision.

Michelson Laser Vision and Alabama Eye & Cataract Center are leading eye care centers in Birmingham located at UAB-Highlands, 1201 11th Avenue S, Suite 501, Birmingham, Alabama 35205.