Would you like to change your look quickly, and inexpensively?  If so, then wearing colored contacts could be the answer!  They change your eye color and your whole look.  Best of all there are contacts just right for your lifestyle!

Are you always on the go?  Do you fall asleep with your contacts still in your eyes?  If so there are contacts that can keep up with you day and night!

On the other hand, do your eyes sometimes feel dried out and uncomfortable?  Do you have depression when your eyes hurt?  Do you like to have your eyes contact free when you sleep?  If the answer is yes you are in luck.  There are contacts just right for you!

What about astigmatism?  Do you have cheap plastic glasses that break when they fall?  Is your goal to have vision that is consistently clear and comfortable and not to wear glasses?  Guess what?  There are contacts that can help you meet your goals.

How about age related challenges with your eye site?  Are you over 40 and having difficulty reading fine print?  Do you need reading glasses?  Do you want to see clearly near and far?  Contacts, with color or without, can be just what you need.

Color contacts come in different types of tints and colors.

Visibility tint:  often a pale blue or green tint added to a lens so that you can see the contact if you drop it.  Because the tint is so light in color it does not effect eye color.

Enhancing tints: these are a solid colored contacts but you can see through them. They are best for lighter colored eyes and accent the original color.

Color tints:  contacts that are single colors like green contact lenses, blue contact lenses, and even red contact lenses which some people wear as costume “jewelry” during Halloween and on Valentine’s Day.  These solid colored tints are best for those with dark eyes.

Before buying contact lenses you will need a contact lens prescription which you can get from your doctor.

There are a few myths out there that should be cleared up.

Clear lenses and colored contact lenses can not get lost behind the eye.  It’s physically impossible.  That’s because there is a thin membrane covering your eye and it connects to the inside part of your eyelids, so the contact lens can’t move from your eye’s front surface.

Another myth to clear up is can lenses pop out of the eye?  Almost never, not with the correct fitting.  Occasionally a soft contact moves out of place but does not pop out of the eye, and you can put the lens back in place by yourself.

Where can you buy these lenses?  One online source is Lens.com.

There are many colored lenses to choose from.  You should have fun finding those that are best for you!

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago are studying abnormalities in eye movement that may help diagnose mental illness.

How the eyes track a moving object can indicate problems with the neural circuitry of the brain and appears to correspond to some mental disorders.  For example, those who are schizophrenic have trouble keeping their eyes focused on objects that are slow-moving.

John Sweeney, director of the Center for Cognitive Medicine in UIC’s department of psychiatry, and his  colleagues are spearheading a research study that is being funded by a $1.2 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.  They are studying and cataloging eye movement patterns in patients diagnosed with psychiatric disorders including depression, bipolar disorder, autism and schizophrenia in order to begin to validate eye movement problems as indicators for a variety of brain diseases.  New technologies allow researchers to precisely measure these abnormalities compared to normal patterns.

“Psychiatric illnesses are not well understood neurologically”, said Sweeney.  The goal of Sweeney and his colleagues is to develop eye movement tests for diagnosing brain disorders.  Tests for many of these illnesses don’t exist today.  For instance there is no scientific bipolar test.  However the field is still in its infancy.

During a child’s development, between ages 8 to 15, the brain undergoes significant changes that affect eye movement control.  Sweeney and his team have been studying eye movement patterns in this age group for 20 years and have been documenting the course of brain and cognitive development during this period.

A variety of tasks test the function of various parts of the brain that control cognitive function and, not necessarily vision, but eye movements.

“Eye movement studies provide a noninvasive way to gain a deeper understanding of the brain dysfunctions at the root of psychiatric illnesses”, said Sweeney.  “We are following patients over time to monitor the progression of their disease and determine whether different treatments are improving their brain and cognitive function.”

Hopefully treatment will be created so that those with mental illness are able to have increasing productivity.

Technorati tags: schizophrenic, depression, bipolar, cognitive, vision, increasing productivity