Your health: Spooky contacts may have scary consequences

Spooky contacts may have consequences

With Halloween approaching, people are going to be looking for fun ways to dress up.

And if you are trying to look scary by wearing contact lenses, the potential effects of wearing nonprescription lenses are even scarier, CBS-Western Illinois reports.

Use of non-prescribed contact lenses could result in infection, ulceration, long lasting vision loss and even blindness.

Eye care specialists warn that nonprescription contacts are not only dangerous, they're illegal.

“Well, anytime you want to be fit into a contact lens, you should always seek medical advice because it is a medical device that's fitting on the front part of your eye. So you always want to check with your eye doctor to make sure you're a good candidate. Make sure there's nothing on your eye that's going to keep you from having a good outcome and not have an infection,” optometrist Kristie Chevalier said.

Prescriptions have been required for all contact lenses since 2005.

Surgery to prevent ‘boot bulge'

Women are turning to calf-reduction surgery in order to fit into knee-high boots for fall, the Daily Mail reports.

Dr Matthew Schulman, a board-certified plastic surgeon in New York, told ABC News that patients have sought liposuction to slim their legs from the knee down and avoid ‘“boot bulge.”

“If the woman is an avid bike rider or runner and it's all muscle, the procedure isn't possible. There has to be at least a little fat there to perform the procedure,” he says.

Dr Schulman adds that it's a “tricky procedure.”

“You're using microliposuction to take out very small amounts of fat,” he said.

Knee-high boots made quite a few appearances on the fall runways, with designers such as Alexander Wang, Gucci and Valentino offering creative takes on the season's staple — so it's no surprise that fashion fans are seeking ways to fit into the tall footwear.

However, Dr Schulman says that recovery time for the procedure can take up to 10 months, so those who have surgery now may not be wearing this season's boots for a while. Patients are generally required to wear a snug compression knee-high stocking for at least two months after a calf reduction, said Dr Elizabeth Morgan, an Atlanta-based plastic surgeon.