We’ve all done the same thing, received a letter or email from our optician and ignored it, thinking, I’ll be alright for another year, I’m quite happy with my eyeglasses my prescription probably hasn’t changed anyway. Or we’ve moved home, relocating to another city and don’t know which opticians to go to anyway so just think we’ll keep our current eyeglasses until they feel like they’re not working anymore.
What You Need to Know About Eyeglasses
The truth is if we continue to wear old eyeglasses for several years we probably won’t notice if our eyesight has changed anyway. We might have symptoms like headaches, sickness and tired eyes and put them down to lack of sleep, stress or perhaps hay fever. But in fact these symptoms can come on due to wearing the wrong eye prescription. Because your eyes are straining to compensate for the wrong lenses your body reacts by squinting your eyes, furrowing your brow and not blinking as much. These reactions start to take a strain on the facial muscles, the eyes, and disorientation can lead to feels of nausea.
On top of this you could also be damaging your eyes for the long term because the muscles in the eyes are having to strain to accommodate the wrong lenses resulting in potential damage to the cornea, retina and eye muscles.
So while you might not think you need eyeglasses it is important you have your prescription checked regularly to ensure it is catering to the needs of your eyes. Our eyes change throughout our lives, and particularly in middle to old age short sightedness can actually improve while long sightedness deteriorates due to the relaxing of muscles in the eyes flattening out the eyes lenses. So don’t be surprised once you hit your 40’s that you have to start having reading glasses, because the majority of people do.
Eye Diseases to Look out For
Another thing that an eye examination looks out for apart from your lens prescription, is your general eye health. For those who have a family history of eye diseases such as glaucoma, cataracts or macular degeneration, it is vitally important that annual check ups are carried out so that if one of these eye conditions is starting to develop, it can be addressed as soon as possible, rather than too late to address the symptoms.
An optometrist will carry out examinations of the eyes including pressure tests to see how eye health is doing and advise on whether a change in prescription may help, or whether other treatment, or a hospital consultation might be necessary.
Besides these two major factors of your prescription having changed or recognizing eye conditions early on, it could make all the difference to your self image if you change your glasses frames every few years, giving you a fresh look and positive feeling towards wearing glasses. Alternatively you might consider whether it’s the right time to start considering wearing contact lenses so you don’t have to wear eyeglasses all the time.
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