How Soon After PRK Can I Exercise?

If you wear glasses or contact lenses, you know the pain of working out. You have worn your glasses to work and brought your gym bag for the evening. You swap out your outfit, ready to sweat out the day’s stresses, only to realize you’ve forgotten your contacts. Glasses it is. Slipping down with your sweat; bobbing up and down with every stride. Dirtying your pores and they slide; nearly whipping off your face as you perform bicycle crunches. Forget doing anything upside down.

Remember that one day you did remember your contacts and took a beautiful run outside? The breeze was picking up, comforting your skin with its cool air. It was sublime until it didn’t slow down and dried your eyes out so badly that blinking became more rapid than your footsteps?

For those of us without perfect vision, working out is just one of many activities through which we have to implement solutions to maintain a decent level of comfort.

More commonly than ever, patients are opting for refractive, corrective procedures to eliminate the hassle of glasses and contacts from their lives, entirely.

Photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) is one type of corrective vision eye surgery. It improves vision permanently and allows patients to bid goodbye to their glasses and contacts.

PRK and LASIK are simple procedures. It takes a surgeon only ten minutes to reshape the cornea using a high-tech laser. The laser corrects the errors and leaves the patient with clear vision. PRK does not touch the surrounding tissue; it only reshapes the cornea.

The surgical procedure is reliable and constantly gaining favorability. It is important to stay on top of the recovery process to ensure your best results possible.

Here are 6 simple steps to follow in your PRK recovery:

• Take special note of your preoperative care. Make sure you are treated with proper lid hygiene, antibiotics, and scrubs. Make sure to tell your doctor if you have dry eyes for which you’ll receive artificial tears or other, comparable remedies.
• Tell your doctor if the post-op lenses are uncomfortable. Immediately after the procedure, you will be fitted for lenses that stay in your eye for a couple days to expedite healing from the surgery. If the lens does not fit correctly, there could be an issue with the healing. If you have any discomfort or the lens does not feel seamless, speak up!
• Take it easy with the anesthetic drops. Too much can delay the healing process. Rely on drops for emergency situations or severe pain; not for simple comfort increase.
• Avoid nonsteroidal topical solutions. They can lead to an early corneal haze.
• Maintain your inflammation. During the healing process, it is vital that you monitor inflammation and make sure that it is kept at a minimum. If your eyes are inflamed, see your doctor before running to the store for steroids. There are too many complications and healing delays involved with taking steroids.
• If you have any pain, chill the cornea.
• Take it easy for a few days! The procedure is so quick, that the healing time seems tantamount, but laying low for one to two days is nothing compared to the unlimited days of vision freedom you have ahead. Be smart, lay off of exercise and screen time. You’ll be a better you in no time at all.

Exercise after PRK is something from a dream! Say goodbye to glasses slipping down your nose and contacts getting so dry on your run, they’re sticking to your corneas (OW!). To get more information on the procedure, reach out to our team at Diamond Vision! We can walk you through the process, the payment options, steps of recovery and everything in between about which you’ll need to know. For in-person information,  you can visit our Atlanta Lasik Eye Surgery Center.