How to remove habaneros from contact lenses
How to emove habanero capsaicin from your contact lens
"How do I remove hot pepper, capsaicin, habanero oil burn from my contacts?", that was the question I googled and could find no direct response to.
Im no doctor and I dont even play one on the internet. In case you didnt know, capsaicin is the hot oil that burns your eyes, hands, mouth and soul in the pepper; the active ingredient.
Unfortunately, for you and I, contact lens wearing folk, capsaicin is not water soluble. Next time we choose to cut up habaneros some habaneros to make our own salsa or hot sauce, lets make sure we wear gloves.
(Random Side Note- nothing to do with the subject: The re-captcha code, the code I had to type in to verify I was a real person trying to post this blog-hub and not the result of emergent behavior from the ghost in the machine, was "member silicone". I thought that was pretty funny for a randomly selected sequence of words...it worked out in a MAD LIBS kind of way.)
Just like you I could not find anyone telling me how to save my contacts from the effects of habanero peppers.
But I took some info bits from here and there and this is what I did to clean the habanero pepper burn from my TORIC CONTACT LENSES:
- I soaked the contacts in Hydrogen Peroxide for 1 hour.
- Rinsed with water
- I soaked the contact lens in rubbing alcohol for another 1 hour
- Rinse with water and milk
- I rinsed them with milk
- Soaked lens overnight in milk
- Rinse with contact solution
- Put lens in eye and bear with the mild burn...it should go away in a minute. It worked for me.
Im not telling you to go and do this. This is really what I did and it worked for me.
I was leaving on tour and I was afraid I was not going to have back up/spare lenses for tour...thank god...or thank milk.
I wonder if I could have skipped the rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide and just cleaned them with milk and soaked them in milk overnight. But that formula worked for me.
I had to steal some real milk from my roommate for I only drink Soy Milk. And NO, soymilk does not remove the capsaicin/Habanero burn. His milk was skim...and I know whole milked would have cleaned them alot better.
Hope this helped.
Comments
Glad to help! hopefully you didnt get Bhut Jolokia in your eyes! ouch.
i should probably try this out...
I basically rubbed my eye after eating chilli (stupid, i know) with my contacts still in, and it hurt A LOT.
I had to take it out, but of course that put more chilli residue onto the lenses. When i got home,I soaked it in the contact lens solution (ReNu) for about 6 days but when i tried putting them on again it still BURNT.
Ive only tried rinsing with milk, and that sorta helped; but although i can keep the lense in for a while, it starts to irritate after a couple of minutes.
Anyway, i should probably try soaking it in milk and then washing again :D
Soo, I'm tempted to use this method since I couldn't find anything either. I forgot to put on my contacts before cutting the jalepenos for lunch, and now my contacts are infected with jalepeno capsaicin. I'm trying to put them back on before I leave the house for other things, and these aren't disposable ones... =/ I'm going to give this tip a try. I'll let you know if it works. :D
Hi Mvang! Thanks for checking out the post. Its just my 2 cents. If you want to keep it simple. Wash your hands with the milk to remove the capsaicins from your finger tips. Then soak them in whole milk overnight. Good Luck! Hope it helps
Thanks for the tips! I wasn't worried about the capsaicin on my fingers afterwards. My worries were with the contacts. I found your blog to be really helpful! :D Here's what I did, since I had a short amount of time before I needed my contacts.
-Rinse with Hydrogen Peroxide
-Rinse with water
-Soak in Half & Half for about 5 minutes (It was the closest thing I had to milk)
-Rinse with water
-Rinse with contact solution
-Put the contact lenses on :D
I was so happy when I put them on and experienced no severe burn anymore. The closest was probably a slight burn for a second on one eye. I'm grateful I found this thread, thanks!!
This week I tried some hot sauce with ghost pepper in it... and if you think the mouth burn is bad, you should try getting it in your eyes. Unfortunately I managed to get my contact infected :(
I will be trying your method and praying it works!
common 2 years ago
thank you so much!
this is the same situation as mine, except with a different type of pepper. its strange similar people's situations are. many thanks! you just saved me a day of irritation