i'm a bit depressed about getting old; all of the sudden my eye sight is starting to wane. although ive needed reading glasses the past 20 years, i always prided myself on my exceptional vision for distance. now my distance is going and i was prescribed bi foculs which i hate. my other alternative is contacts. any of you guys use them? any major draw backs? can you tell you are wearing them? i am not a candidtae for lasik, i already explored that route. thanks
I have been blind without glasses/contacts since I was a kid and have worn contacts for almost 15 years on and off. I have stopped wearing contacts in the past few years because I find them uncomfortable, but I will put them in occasionally and I'll probably go back to using them again in the future. They are not so bad if you only have them in for 3-4 hours at a time. When I have them in for longer my eyes get itchy and I can really feel them. For whatever reason, if I am outside moving around (camping, for example) I can wear them all day long and even go to sleep forgetting I have them on. It is also easier to focus on things with contacts and you have a full field of vision when you wear them. You will definitely need glasses in addition to contacts for those times you don't feel like putting them in.
Riddler: Bifocals are now made with no line in the glasses, so that no one can tell you're wearing them. My contacts have never bothered me, even when there is a slight tear down the edge of the contact. It feels like a tiny bump, but you can get home and put in a new one with no problem. As a whole, many people report that the years after 50 are less stressful, and happier. Good luck.
I realized too late that too many hours spent at the computer was ruining my eyesight. Our eyes have naturally evolved (creationsists please forgive me) to focus at a distance. They are only meant to focus up close for short term tasks. If you look around the world, you can see proof of that everywhere. Look at any population that spends a lot of time reading, working with computers and you'll find that they suffer from poor distance vision. Look in any ghetto, how many wearers of glasses or books do you see there? What I did to prevent further harm to my eyes is to get a pair of glasses for the computer that simulates looking at a distance. They focus at about 2 feet from my eyes. I only wear distance vision glasses outside of the house such as when I'm driving. Bifocals wouldn't work for me. I'd have to tilt my head up constantly to look at the computer screen. http://www.myopia.org/ http://www.myopia.org/brumerpaper.htm
Thank you for the interesting links. Without a doubt my vision has been getting progressively worse since I started wearing glasses and it has been more noticeable in the last 5 years or so. I have known for several years that the cause of this has been the glasses themselves and have disliked getting prescriptions because the doctor always pushes stronger and stronger lenses. I have never really known where to look for any sort of help though, so I will read through that website. Appreciate it.
I wore contacts for about 15 years before I got lasik in 2000. I can tell you that with contacts your vision will keep getting worse because the doctors will do the same thing they do with your glasses...keep pushing stronger and stronger prescriptions. My vision was 20/700 by the time i got lasik. (20/200 is considered legally blind, so i was way past that) I couldnt count fingers at 3 feet and I couldnt even see the big E on the eye chart(it looked blank to me) Anyway back to contacts...Here are the problems I remember. First I started with daily wear. When I first started, it sometimes took up to 45 minutes to put the contacts in my eyes. (sometimes they fold in half when going into your eye and you have to take them out and retry) Then it took a while for my eyes to get used to it so I could only wear for a few hours per day starting off. Once I got used to it I could wear them from morning to bedtime. Probably at least once per month the wind would blow my contact out, or i would blink wrong and it would fold in my eye and it would be really painful. When your eyes itch with contacts, you cant rub them or they will fold and cause you pain...you have to "massage" the itch instead. Also..you spend alot of money on contacts and the equipment that goes with contacts. If you accidentally sleep in them, you will have a hard time getting them out the next day(if they are daily wear) If you get extended wear, disposable contacts, then you dont have to buy all the contact stuff that you buy with daily wear, but they say you are supposed to throw the contact away after 2 weeks, so that can actually get more expensive. Also you can get certain eye infections from contact lenses because the lens goes on your finger before it goes in your eye. Ok...now that all the bad stuff is out of the way...here is the good stuff. First...nobody will call you 4-eyes if you wear contacts. hmm...thats about it. Oh here is one you might like. When I was 17 I got these really green colored contacts and wore them for 2 years. Pretty girls would stop me everyday and tell me how beautiful my eyes were and I do mean EVERY day. I still remember one day just walking down the street minding my own business when a young 20 year old woman said "wow i love your eyes" and as I kept walking she yelled louder "Can I have your baby?" Can't say women will still do this though because when I did it, it was the early 1990s and people had not really seen colored contacts yet, so that ship might have sailed for you. I should mention that if you have brown eyes, colored contacts look very fake and will make you look like a crazed alien if someone is really close to your face. Colored contacts only look real if you have blue or grey eyes naturally.
Riddler, Regarding the bifocals. As was mentioned earlier, there has been an alternative for some time now. They are called progressive lens. The prescription varies as you look through them from forward to down. It takes your brain a bit to get used to them, but now I don't even notice.
i know this sounds trivial but this really bothered me. i know millions wear glasses but my distance was always strong and it deteriorated so quickly. i guess needing glasses is close (not really) to a guy losing hair,.. i do have bifoculs without lines but they are a tad bulky. all bifocols are to an extent; bulky. i am going to try contacts.. hopefully i cant notice or feel them when wearing them.
Good luck. I tried various types of contact lens for 20 + years and finally gave up. I have "dry eyes" and any alcohol makes it much worse. I had radial keratonomy 15 years ago and went without galsses at all untill I started to need reading glasses. I got tired of putting reading glasses on and off, so I went to progressive lens which have very little or no correction looking straight, but function as reading glasses up close.
Wearing contacts to correct for any significant myopia (nearsightedness) makes more difficult to see "medium" distances. (Which are just where your monitors are placed). They are geared to see clearly at far distance. Likely you'll need reading glasses to correct for this. And forget about reading up close, definitely need reading glasses unless you have unusually long arms HOWEVER, I choose to wear glasses. With glasses I can change the FOCAL LENGTH to my retina in 1 second by simply pushing them further down my nose. Now I can see my (eight) monitors easily & clearly WITHOUT a magnifying glass euphemistically termed "reading glasses". Easily adjustable to see clearly at any distance I require. Pushed back up my nose in another second for the return to long distance viewing. Simple, effective. That's why I wear glasses and not contacts