The Claim: Wearing Glasses Can Weaken Your Eyes

NY Times ^ | January 25, 2005 | ANAHAD O'CONNOR

[beezdotcom]

I was gonna believe this - but it's in the Times, so now I have to be skeptical...

[neverdem]

I wonder why it changed to begin with?

IIRC, the lens in your eye loses its ability to focus as folks age.

Reagan is King, are you available for a consult?

[supercat]

That's true for adults, but children NEED to wear their glasses if the power is significant, and especially if one eye is worse than the other. The nerve network of the retina needs stimulus during the important years for the eye (up to about age 10) or it will not develop the intricate nerve network necessary for sharp vision. I see a lot of teenagers and adults with one permanently weak eye (anisometropic amblyopia or refractive amblyopia) because they weren't corrected at an early enough age. Be sure and get your children checked by at least by age 5 or 6 to make sure they are using both eyes equally. If you notice an eye turning in or out have them checked even earlier.

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.

[A CA Guy]

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.

[Boot Hill]

"But ophthalmologists say this is an illusion."

Now that's a classic turn of phrase!

--Boot Hill

[GailA]

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.

[supercat]

Atigmatism, perhaps, or just general fuzziness?

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?

[neverdem]

Reagan is King sounded like an eye doc. I was hoping for a more informative explanation. I'm just a family practice doc.

[shibumi]

"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.

[A CA Guy]

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.

[GailA]

A BLURR. I do have atigmatisim..and my vision is a general blurr. Without my glasses I can't even watch TV, drive, or read. My reader is 400 I forget what the distance one is but without my glasses I couldn't read a street sign.

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.

[GailA]

I've wondered if the constant changes in my perscription had any thing to do with my having Fibromyaligia. From the lit I've read on it frequent changes in eye glasses is a 'norm'. If this yearly quarter power loss of vision keeps up I'll be wearing 'coke' bottles before long. I'm a blue/gray eyed, dark blonde...er mostly grey now.

The only med I take is Synthroid for hypothyroid.

[GretchenM]

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.

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.

[durasell]

Yes, glasses do weaken your eyes, but they also strengthen your nose and your ears.

[Squantos]

Beer Goggles Ping !

[Squantos]

LOL.....Mom was a proctologist, Dad was an ophthalmologist....thus my sh*tty outlook on life.......

[Rca2000]

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.

[cherry]

here's a question for you....sure, glasses for poor vision are necessary, but what about poor vision as you age....where you need reading glasses...

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?

[syriacus]

40 years ago, doctors told a teenage friend of mine that she should wear hard contact lenses because they would help prevent the deterioration of her eyesight. Several years before, she had begun to become severely nearsighted. The doctors said the hard lenses would prevent any more changes in the shape of her eye.

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.

[syriacus]

I have a theory that perhaps our eyes lose their "accomodation" ability the more our society wears sunglasses year round.

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.)