|
| |
- Contact Lens Specialists
- General Optometrists
|
|
| |
|
Will wearing glasses weaken your eyes? Optometrist from Perth reveals truth.
By Janet Viner from Viner Optometrist, Armadale |
I have been an optometrist in Perth for the last 20 years. One question
that keeps coming up time and time again is: do glasses weaken your
eyes?
Those who wear glasses find that each timethey go for an examination their prescription goes up. Sometimes they stay steady, but hardly ever does the prescription come down.
There is an awareness in the community that eyes get worse rather than better and so some have even taken to avoiding glasses all together. I have met hundreds of patients in their late 40’s with pounding headaches and red raw eyes who refuse to give into to reading glasses because they think it will weaken their eyes.
Firstly let’s look at short sightedness. This is where you need glasses to see clearly in the distance. Often it start in childhood and levels off in the mid to late 20’s. Why do people go short sighted?
It seems to be a combination of genetics and doing lots of close work. If you have got certain genes and do a lot of reading and studying you will go short sighted. Notice there is no mention here of wearing glasses.
Fortunately there has been a lot of research done to test the “glasses make your eyes worse theory” and fortunately there is no evidence that this is true.
In fact, there is some evidence that keeping your prescription up to date will prevent short sightedness from galloping along.
Now let’s look at the curse of those in their 40’s: reading glasses. As a 40 something the small print starts getting hard to read, so grudgingly you succumb to reading glasses. You either get them prescribed by your optometrist or you get them from the chemist. Then what happens? Two years later you need a stronger pair.
“Why have my eyes weakened?”. You glower and look for someone to blame. “It must be those damn glasses!” (Conveniently forgetting that you are now two years older and your eyes are now “more mature”).
The reason you cannot focus is not because of lazy muscles. No, it’s because the lens in your eye that needs to flex to change focus has got bigger and stiffer with maturity. Those eye muscles of yours just can’t make the lens bend and stretch like they used to, no matter how strong they are.
Here is my favorite misconception. Many people have got a story about how a particular pair of glasses “ruined their eyes”.
Chemist glasses, your sister’s glasses or even your dead grandma’s glasses will not ruin your eyes.
If wear glasses that are “wrong” the worst that will happens is that you will get headaches and eyestrain. No long lasting effects.
Glasses don’t make your eyes better and they don’t make them worse. They just help you see more clearly. That the truth, from a Perth optometrist who wears glasses himself.
|
|
|
 |
