Glasses are a fashionable accessory that can express your personality and style but also help bring your vision back into focus. The right eyeglasses prescription can correct refractive errors and reduce eye strain, fatigue, and pain.
Your glasses don’t permanently improve your eyesight, but they correct your vision as you wear them, sharpening your focus and making daily tasks easier.
Following a comprehensive eye exam with your eye care team, you’ll receive an up-to-date prescription, which you can use to update your glasses and correct your vision.
Benefits of Wearing Glasses
Wearing glasses can make a significant difference in your vision. While glasses can’t reshape your eyes and reverse refractive errors, the right pair can transform your vision to near perfection.
Correct Refractive Errors
Refractive errors are a primary vision problem affecting the ability to see clearly. When the cornea, the clear dome on the surface of the eye, is misshapen in some way, the light doesn’t focus correctly on the retina, leading to blurry vision.
The 4 types of refractive errors include:
- Myopia, or nearsightedness, which makes distant objects look blurry
- Hyperopia, or farsightedness, which makes near objects look blurry
- Astigmatism, which can distort vision at all distances
- Presbyopia, which is an age-related refractive error that makes near vision appear blurry
Blurry vision is the most common symptom of any refractive error, but there are other signs you may experience, such as:
- Double vision
- Seeing glares or halos around lights
- Squinting
- Hazy vision
- Difficulty focusing on objects
Changes in your vision may be difficult to recognize on your own, so regular eye exams are the best way to monitor your vision for the emergence or advancement of refractive errors. You can also develop more than one refractive error, such as a combination of myopia and astigmatism.
Effects of Wearing the Wrong Eyeglasses Prescription
It may seem harmless to wear an older pair of glasses, but even the slightest error in a prescription can disrupt your visual acuity and make your eyes work harder to focus on objects.
Eye Strain
With a heavy reliance on screens throughout everyday life, digital eye strain, or computer vision syndrome, is becoming a common vision problem. Compounded with an incorrect or old prescription, eye strain can affect you on and off digital devices.
If you wear glasses or contact lenses with the wrong prescription, your eye muscles can be forced to work harder to focus your vision. You may try to squint your eyes to compensate and focus vision, which can lead to headaches and eye fatigue.
Eye strain can cause irritating symptoms, including:
- Sore eyes
- Overwatering of the eyes
- Amplified sensitivity to light
- Muscle pain in the back, shoulders, or neck
When you notice these symptoms, your optometrist can help by updating your prescription. They may recommend specialty lenses for screen use or suggest a lens coating on your glasses.
Alternative Vision Correction
Glasses aren’t the only option to correct and improve your vision—contact lenses and laser surgery may be possible options.
Contact Lenses
Contact lenses are growing in popularity for their versatility, especially among those who prefer not to wear glasses. However, just like in glasses, your prescription must be precise to prevent symptoms of eye strain.
There are various contact lenses to cater to essentially any eye concern or refractive error. A common symptom of eye strain can include dry eyes, which can lead to irritation, gritty sensations, and blurry vision.
Getting a proper contact lens exam and fitting can allow you to start with a trial pair to find the most comfortable lens style to correct your vision.
LASIK
For those who want a solution that decreases their reliance on glasses or contact lenses, laser eye surgery offers vision correction by safely and effectively reshaping the cornea.
Your optometry team can manage the consultation and screening and co-manage the surgical process to create a seamless pre-operation and post-surgical care experience.
Keep Your Eyeglasses Prescription Up to Date
Glasses can improve your vision, but only if they’re the right lenses. Visit Pacific EyeCare Optometry for a comprehensive eye exam, manage your refractive errors, and let us get to the bottom of your eye health concerns to keep your eyes healthy.
