Eyewear

[Sammie]

Originally posted by Jacquin
I fell asleep on a train once and that was unpleasant enough without the whole painful eyes thing...
J

*Doesn't want to know!*

 

[Mamb]

I was having to put my glasses on to read the whiteboard, and then take them off in order to focus on my paper, and so on and so forth

I can really sympathise with that. It used to be a major headache (literally) for me.
But I got contacts about 18 months ago and they have made such a difference (yes, I am aware that sounds like a Specsavers advert, but seriously, they have...). I am quite short-sighted (-3.5 / -5.0) and going out in contacts eliminates the annoying rims at the edges of my vision, eliminates the reflections, doesn't erode the bridge of my nose, I can play cricket without my glasses flying off and, of course, people can see my lovely eyes!!
Even so, there are limitations. The wearing hours are frustrating, and when reading music (I play the violin), I often forget to blink and this causes painful drying out of my lenses as well as rendering me temporarily blind (which is a bit of a bugger in the middle of a concert). So I wear glasses for music.

I have considered Laser treatment, but I'm a bit scared too. At least I can see a bit now. What if the surgery makes things worse?

Really interesting thread btw.

 

[Sammie]

Have to admit, i too am rather scared by the idea of laser surgery.

The user hours for contacts don't tend to bother me. I can keep mine in perfectly comfortabley for the full 12 hours, though i tend to give my eyes a break about 1 day a week, and if i stay out late and leave my lenses in longer, it's a little uncomfortable but certainly not enough to deter me! But having said that, i do pay slightly more, so that the lenses i have are more oxygen-permeable than those i initially tried. Well worth the extra £2 a month, though!

And, just as an aside, Mamb - you are a LOT more short-sighted than me!

 

[Jaysi]

I am supposed to wear glasses because I am extremely short sited. I can only just read the top letter on the eye chart when I go to the opticians.

But I hate wearing glasses. They are too much hassle, with cleaning them and everything.

I went through a stage of wearing contacts but I then was told I don't blink properly and so it was dangerous to wear contacts because they dry out extremely quick.

So I just squint and bear it.

 

[Sammie]

How long did u wear them for, Jaysi? Cos it took me months before i automatically blinked enough, with lenses in. Besides, in my experience, if they get too dry they just fall out. Expensive, yes, but dangerous? I don't see how!

 

[Jaysi]

Originally posted by Sammie
How long did u wear them for, Jaysi? Cos it took me months before i automatically blinked enough, with lenses in. Besides, in my experience, if they get too dry they just fall out. Expensive, yes, but dangerous? I don't see how!

I wore them for about three months. But apparently I don't blink properly even when not wearing them.

For some strange reason I wasn't allowed soft lenses and so had to have hard ones. Which I couldn't clean and once one of them got scratched which really really hurt and cut the inside of my eyelid. So that's where the danger part comes in. If they fell out and got a minute scratch on, I would certainly know about it next time I put it in.

 

[Richardb]

Is there a connection between reading (a lot) and glasses? Hmm.. About twenty years ago I had to start wearing glasses. Then, like now I read a lot. Things further away got hard to read. A clever doctor told me something that helped: excercise your eyes in new ways. I held books on my check and read that way, and my long distance eye sight was getting weak. I started holding books a good two feet in front of me. I wore glasses for 4 years, and each year my eyes improved and I was able to eventually stop wearing them. I read constantly, and sit in front of computers at least 10 hours a day commonly... and have 20/20 eye sight still. You need to excercise those eyes in multiple ways, and make sure that you don't put that nose in those books... I just got far enough away that the words were just starting to get bleary and read... and read and read. Strange to think that eyes can be excercised and improve, but they can! I am sure that this is not always true, but worth a try for those who still have 'young eyes' as I did then.

 

[Aik Haw]

Shrug, this problem with the prevalence of myopia ( what people call short sightedness ) has so many hypothesis practically spawning over the past twenty years that I am not sure where to begin. ( By the way, I wear glasses, and I am seriously considering laser surgery, even though my opthamology consultant tells me the technology is still too primitive as it involves mucking around with the cornea unnecessarily ).

The popular theory is reading and watching too much TV can cause myopia. This have evidence for and against it. The evidence for is mostly epidemiological, where there are evidence to indicate that people who do watch more TV and read too much ( eye strain ) has a higher prevalence rate of myopia over people who don't.

The problem with this theory is that there are major anomalies in terms of population base studies like in some affluent parts of Africa where people do read and watch TV a lot but has a large portion of the population still having 20/20 visions. Also, though there are statistical evidence, physiological evidence is rather scanty. The worse thing, it turns out that myopia has a strong racial tendency with lesser influence per hour and intensity basis compared to other races.

This leads to the second theory which is slightly unPC but has a stronger evidence behind this. The theory goes that the longer a population or race has left behind their hunter-gatherer past and mantains a long period of peace where vision no longer becomes a problem of life and death due to a lack of war and reliance more on an established system, as the generations goes by, myopia becomes more and more a problem as myopia is not selected against.

This is particularly evident among the Oriental populations, and most acute among the Japanese and Chinese, where the percentage of people with myopia reaching 98% in some cities like Taipei and Shanghai, and never reaches below 50% even in the village areas. ( Do note myopia among male Caucasians in London reaches 60% of the population surveyed only in 1990 ). The other interesting population spike is in Sri Lanka. After some time, it is noted that what distinguishes this two population from the rest is that vision was never really a survival factor for both groups for nearly 4000 years in the case of the Orientals and 2000 years in the case of the Sinhalese. Oppose this to the urban Zulu and Bantu races of Africa who have a myopia rate of less than 10% and in many cases, have only left their hunter-gatherer past behind for at most 8 generation.

 

[kater]

Ask a simple question and you get an educational essay nice one Aik, everytime you post I learn more than at lectures keep it up m8

 

[Mamb]

That is intersting actually. I have heard people say about myopia being an evolutionary condition, but I never really thought about it in terms of race. But you are probably right.

Maybe that is why in many modern societies glasses are seen to give an impression of greater intellingence (that is intelligence in the context of an settled urban society; success as a hunter requires a very different type of intelligence, so different that most of us would starve to death in a situation where hunting was the only way to get food).
In urban societies, be it the Indus Valley settlements or modern London, those seen as intelligent often do a lot of reading, writing and/or close-up skilled work, for which there is no selection against myopia, and so the characteristic remains common in the gene pool.

 

[Mamb]

when you have a weak muscle you need to exercise it, to strengthen it, rather than prop it up with progressively larger crutches.

I too used to think this and was reluctant to wear newly prescribed, stronger glasses, but I think the latest research shows that under-prescription on lens power actually speeds up the deterioration of your eyesight. It actually upsets me quite a lot when I have an eye test and find my power has increased. It is supposedly related to growth, but it seems to me that things only get worse, and never better. Oh well, I just have to accept it.
Did anyone else feel some emotion in Spiderman when the guy wakes up and finds he can see clearly without his glasses? What I would give for that...

 

[Sammie]

God yes. And i know so well the frustration of being told your eyes are just a little worse, every time you go to have them tested....

 

[Carmichael]

Originally posted by Mamb
Did anyone else feel some emotion in Spiderman when the guy wakes up and finds he can see clearly without his glasses? What I would give for that...

You and me both bro'. I've wished that would happen for years.

 

[milamber_reborn]

I wouldn't mind laser surgery, but it's damn expensive and not covered by Medicare in Australia. Because it's classed as cosmetic surgery they say. What a load of crap. From what I know it takes 5 minutes, they flip your lens and and do something or rather with the laser and it has a 95% success rate. If you're lucky you walk out the surgery with good eyesight, no problems.

 

[Mamb]

I might have poor eyesight, but there's no missing the new-look renegade gopher