Ortho-K lenses are gas permeable contact lenses that you wear overnight to reshape the lens of your eye so you don’t have to wear glasses or contacts during the day. They’re normally marketed for children because studies show they stop the progression of myopia in children. They’re also useful for people who can’t wear contacts in the day like contact sports players and people who work in dusty environments. I think they also could be good for biohackers so I decided to get some during my routine eye exam for contacts.

Cost/Fitting: my vision is -1.75 without glasses. my eye doctor originally told me these would be $1400 and insurance wouldn’t cover it. However, when they ran my insurance it covered almost everything, so that my total cost for these lenses and all the follow ups for a year was $350, which I really can’t complain about, even compared to daily contact lenses. The fitting was really cool. They had a specially made 3D camera to scan the topography of my eye and create each lens to exactly reshape my lens work with my eye length. When the lenses came in after a week, they put some dye in my eyes and made sure the lenses fit correctly with a light microscope.

Experience: visually these are great. I’ve literally never seen this well in contacts or glasses. The first time I was outside with corrected vision without contacts or glasses was an emotionally moving experience. There’s such a clarity to my vision, both up close and far away. It also seems as if more area of my vision is in perfect focus than it is with contact lenses, and this makes actually using my eyes all day far less straining. Another interesting feature is that the sunlight looks tangibly different. I can see it reflecting off the road, leaves, even in the air as a glow that I never really saw properly before. It’s as if my vision suddenly became more HDR than before. I am really not sure why this is the case but it’s undeniable to me.

When I go running in the morning sunlight, I definitely am feeling an even greater mood lift, and I feel I don’t have to look at the sky anymore to get the full mental effect of a morning run. I usually watch sunsets as well but this seems really similar compared to when I was wearing contacts. I measure my sleep data, and while I was hoping to get better sleep out of this, there is no difference compared to before when I was using normal non-UV blocking soft contacts.

Negatives:

These are really difficult to take out in the morning and my eyes are usually red for the effort it takes to get them out. I’m hoping to get better at this but it still takes at least 5 minutes every morning. Right now I see better during the day until around 4pm when I feel my vision start to subtly slip with each passing hour. I am also having trouble with night vision, at least so far. By the night, my vision starts to slip and driving is hard because light is very distorted, headlights will make pin pricks of light that appear10 feet tall. The eye doctor gave me trial lenses in every size between -1.75 and -.5 but it’s a pain to have to trial and error to get the right lenses to prevent this. The eye doctor says she expects my eyes to hold the correction all day and night by my next follow up in 3 weeks. I hope that’s true. I could see this transition period being a deal breaker to some people.

Any other biohackers tried these out? Very curious if there are other experiences with them in this community.