More Eye Myths

More Eye Myths

Another blog (a much more popular one) has generated a list of the top 15 "useless eyesight myths".

USELESS EYESIGHT MYTHS

I agree with all of them except # 14, which states:

Myth #14: “Although eyeglasses makes you see better, they make vision get worse over time.”

Wearing eyeglasses will never make your eyes worse. Before you start wearing glasses, you are accustomed to seeing a blurry world around you. Since this is all you have ever seen, you accept it as normal. When your vision is corrected with eyeglasses you start seeing a clear world. Now when you remove your eyeglasses after wearing them for several months, you are presented with the same blurry world as before. You feel you were able to get around without wearing glasses before but now when you remove glasses you see all blurry and cannot get around. In reality it’s your perception that has changed.

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That is only partly true. In the case of LATENT HYPEROPIA, the wearing of plus lenses to correct either hyperopia or presbyopia or both CAN AND DOES cause the latent hyperopia to become MANIFEST. That means that the vision of those patients definitely does deteriorate. Their Rx "increases" (or at least more of it becomes manifest), their subjective blur increases, their uncorrected acuity decreases, and their dependency on vision correction increases. For those people, the more they wear glasses, the worse their vision gets. Its admittedly somewhat rare, but its definitely an exception to the rule. SOME people DO have worsening eyesight with glasses wear. In fact, this is probably where the "myth" came from IMO...