Busting Myths about Glasses and Contact Lenses

It is commonly believed that wearing glasses for a longer period of time makes your eye sight weaker. However, it is completely baseless as what depreciates your vision is age and not glasses. Glasses power (number of your spectacles) usually increase up to 18-21 years of age and then it becomes stable. Glasses are just optical aids that help us to see clear. However, continuous use of glasses neither help in stabilizing or reducing the number (power) of spectacles nor it increases reliance on spectacles (or increases the number).

Use of vitamin A, Ayurvedic or homeopathic eye drops cannot decrease the number of spectacles or remove them. It is a generally circulated myth. Deficiency of vitamin A causes night blindness, wherein patient has difficulty in seeing clearly in the dim light. Vitamin A helps in people suffering from night blindness and those who are deficient in vitamin A. Contact lenses and Lasik Laser are the two methods available to get rid of glasses.

The advent of contact lenses has come as a welcoming change to those who were tired of wearing glasses. However, the most obvious question that must be considered before taking the plunge is what indeed is the right time to wear lenses? Among the doctors, there is a unanimous view that lenses can be used by anybody and anytime. However, it is also agreed upon that the 'proper age' to sport the lenses is 11-14 years as the lenses necessitate observing some precautions and thereby a certain maturity.

Astigmatism refers to the condition where the lens or the cornea, contrary to a normal situation, is not curved equally. Owing to this irregularity, the light is not focussed properly, causing your vision to be blurred or distorted. Contact lenses were generally not recommended in case of astigmatism; however, it has been proved untrue since special soft lenses known as toric contact lenses, made either from the traditional hydrogel material or silicone hydrogel have proved to be both effective and corrective lens in such cases.