How do your eyes breathe when your sleeping?

Question:

Peolpe say dont wear your contacts at night because they cant breathe. so you take them off when you sleep and put them on when you wake up. but when your eyes are closed do they still breathe? can someone explain if your eyes still are able to breathe if your eyelids are closed.

Answers:
That's a good question. The eye has a critical oxygen tension of 50mmHg - this is the lowest the oxygen in the eye needs to get. Normally with our eyes open the oxygen tension is 155mmHg but when our eye is closed it goes all the way down to 55mmHg! This is so close to the critical oxygen tension that our eyes swell 2-3% overnight. Having a contact lens on the eye at night would decrease the oxygen even more - especially when the it is not designed to be worn overnight.
So your eyes can still breathe with your eyelids closed; but barely.

Other Answers:
maybe the liquids inside your eyes do the breathing...and with contacts on..it acts like a bandaid...it doesn't allow the liquids to infiltrate on that location...

hope that makes sense

it is just an expression. not to be taken literally.
you eyelids do not fit as tight on your eyes as do contacts. eyelids are natural. contacts are not.

when you sleep, your eye lids don't close up completely..there's a small gap and that's where it will breathe...

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How do your eyes breathe when your sleeping?

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