Not everyone can afford or wear daily disposable contacts so for white eye health your lenses should be cleansed, rinsed and disinfected every day using these simple, no hassle rules.

Cleaning: Different cleansers are often used for different brands and types of lenses; so always follow the manufactures recommendations. For soft contact lenses, put the lens in your palm, shake the cleanser and add one or two drops onto the lens. Rub it gently with your middle finger to remove the dirt. After cleaning one side of the lens, turn it over and clean the other side. It only takes 1-2 minutes to clean one lens. 

Rinsing: The idea of rinsing lenses is to wash away the cleanser, which is bad for your eyes. You can use tap water to rinse hard contact lenses or rigid gas permeable lenses, but even the best contact lenses must be rinsed with bottled sterile saline, not home-made saline or tap water. For rinsing, put the cleansed lens on your palm, add some tap water or sterile saline onto the lens and rub it with your middle finger to wash away the cleanser.

Disinfecting: After cleaning, the lenses should be put in a storage solution for disinfection. It is relatively simple to disinfect rigid gas permeable lenses as you only need to place them in the storage solution. However, disinfecting soft contact lenses is a bit more complex and here are the three main methods:

• Heat disinfection: Put the cleansed and rinsed lenses into the lens case; add some sterile saline into the case before heating it to 80 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes. The disinfection procedure is then complete. The lenses can be used after cooling down. The advantages of this method are that it is effective and no eye allergy or discomfort will be caused as only sterile saline is used in the process. The disadvantage is that the heat may cause damage to the all but the best contact lenses and shorten their life span. Usually, the lenses have to be replaced within a year.

• Hydrogen peroxide: Put the cleansed and rinsed lenses into a hydrogen peroxide solution for disinfection. Hydrogen peroxide is detrimental to the eye, so the best contact lenses have to go through a neutralization process before wearing. To neutralize your lenses, take them out of the Peroxide and soak in a neutralizing solution. Or you can put a neutralizing pill or special metal ring into the peroxide solution with the lenses. The whole disinfection and neutralization process can last from ten to sixty minutes, but most eye allergies can be avoided if the hydrogen peroxide is completely neutralized. The disadvantage lies in the complexity of the process, with no shortcuts available. 

• Chemical disinfection: Put the cleansed and rinsed lenses into a disinfection solution. The process generally takes a few hours; however the advantages are its simplicity and the fact that even the best contact lenses can be worn immediately after being taken out of the solution. The downside is the risk of chemical components diffusing into the lenses, which may cause discomfort to some people.

Removing Protein: Apart from daily cleansing, rinsing and disinfecting, soft contact lenses and rigid gas permeable lenses also require protein removal on a weekly basis.