Posted on 01/25/2005 10:13:22 PM PST by neverdem
REALLY?
THE FACTS Glasses can bring a blurry world into focus, but some people suspect that by doing all the heavy lifting the glasses may speed the natural decline of vision. But ophthalmologists say this is an illusion.
How well a person can see is largely determined by the size of the eyeball, something a pair of glasses cannot change. The average eye is about an inch from the cornea, in the front, to the retina, in the back. When the eyes are either too large (shortsightedness) or too small (farsightedness), the cornea cannot properly focus images on the retina, and glasses can help compensate.
Dr. Robert Cykiert, an ophthalmologist at New York University Hospitals Center, said the contrast between poor and normal vision becomes more obvious when people wear glasses for a while and then take them off. But glasses have no lasting effect on eyesight.
Reading in the dark won't damage your eyes either, Dr. Cykiert said, though you may get a headache from all the squinting and straining.
THE BOTTOM LINE Glasses will not make your vision deteriorate more quickly.
scitimes@nytimes.com
I was gonna believe this - but it's in the Times, so now I have to be skeptical...
IIRC, the lens in your eye loses its ability to focus as folks age.
Reagan is King, are you available for a consult?
Is it possible for eye muscles to adjust the shape of the eye (or, more notably, the lens-retina distance) in any significant or useful fashion? If so, I could see potential usefulness for that.
From young I played competitive sports, then all at once as a young adult I found I was having some trouble seeing at night and then things got slightly less than clear in the day.
The day before I went in and found I needed glasses I won an Open tennis tournament with a doubles partner where I was returning serves well over 110MPH.
I had 20/50 20/70.
I can only think that at that time I was working with an early computer with a 5 inch monochrome screen and I had to punch in lots of numbers for reports a couple of hours a day. I was playing tennis at that time 2-3 hours a day during the week as well, so my eyes got plenty of exercise.
They have not altered now for 16 years and it beats the heck out of me as to why I ever went from great, to off, and then no more changes.
Just weird.
Now that's a classic turn of phrase!
--Boot Hill
Then how does this explain my being blurred at all distances? I was not always blurred at all distances, it stated with the 'age' related need for a pair of reading glasses. I'm 56 and see blurred at all distances. Had a cataract removed from my left eye about 8 years ago. The one in the right is on a scale from 1-100 a 15, a long way from removal. I wear tri-focals which need changing every year as my reader needs strengthening by a quarter power.
If you point a diverged laser beam at a wall and look at it, what do you see? As you move your head, how does what you see change?
Reagan is King sounded like an eye doc. I was hoping for a more informative explanation. I'm just a family practice doc.
"It could be a new look, anyway. Eye patch, parrot and puffy shirt."
It's all the rage if you want to be a dodgeball star.
Ah, I know lots of your types here in California and they are the ones best surviving in practice.
I'm sure you do great work and thanks for trying to get an answer from Reagan is King for me.
I wear those blended lenses now as the traditional tri-focal didn't work well for me. I've also noticed I'm severely night blind, I quit driving at night about 3 years ago. I quilt, and have problems with seeing dark thread on medium to dark fabric. Ditto for reading certain color schemes people use for web sites.
The only med I take is Synthroid for hypothyroid.
Light constricts the pupils which makes it easier to focus on reading material. It's a good idea to have adequate light if reading for more than a brief time.
Yes, glasses do weaken your eyes, but they also strengthen your nose and your ears.
Beer Goggles Ping !
LOL.....Mom was a proctologist, Dad was an ophthalmologist....thus my sh*tty outlook on life.......
Hey guys, is there anyone out there qualified to explain to me, what the vision number measurements(like 20/20, 20/50), mean, and how are they determined?
BTW-- I DO wear glasses... Have for about 13 years now, and should've years before that.
it seems for me that the more I use my reading glasses, the more I NEED to use them, even for things such as cutting up veggies...its just easier with the readers.....
also, I have a theory that perhaps our eyes lose their "accomodation" ability the more our society wears sunglasses year round....seems that we might be weakening our ability of our eyes to adjust to differant light settings.......can that be possible?
I don't know what happened to her vision after that, since we went to different colleges, and the topic of her eyesight didn't come up when we spent time together after college graduation.
I've wondered if frequent-sunglass-wearing, (especially among, say, pre-teens) has led to an increase in depression. (I'm not saying sunglass-wearing doesn't have positive effects.)
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