You’ve grown used to the fact that you need corrective lenses to see things at a distance, and you’re certainly not alone in this. More than 150 million people in the United States have vision issues, and the most common is nearsightedness, or myopia, which affects about 42% of Americans.
Dealing with this one issue is easy enough, but now age is catching up with you and you’re having trouble reading things up close. This vision issue, called presbyopia, is also incredibly common and easily corrected with readers.
But do you really want to be juggling different pairs of glasses? There is a better way with progressive lenses, which Dr. Curtis Frank and the team here at Vision and Ortho-K Center are pleased to offer as part of our frames and vision-correcting lenses.
Let’s take a look at how you can simplify your life and see more clearly with progressive lenses.
If you struggle to see clearly at distance because of myopia or astigmatism, you know that all it takes is a special lens to knock everything into focus. And the same holds true for those readers you’ve bought when you need to read or work on the computer.
With progressive lenses, we can handle both of these vision corrections with a single pair of lenses. As the name implies, the lenses change bit by bit, from the top to the bottom, to help you see things far and away and up close.
The top of the lenses help with your nearsightedness, and the prescription slowly transitions down to the bottoms of the lenses to handle your magnification needs for close-up work.
Progressive lenses aren’t the first to tackle different vision correction needs, as bifocals and even trifocals have been around for some time. These lenses, however, have distinctive lines that separate the lenses, so it’s almost like having two different lenses glued together.
With progressive lenses, the vision correction occurs in the same piece of ,and there’s a gentle transition between the two areas without visible lines in the lenses.
It can take a little time — usually a week or two — to adjust to progressive lenses. First, you need to make sure that they sit properly on your face so that you get the full benefit of the lens. The reason why the lens at the top helps you to see far is because you’re typically looking up and out for distance viewing. And the bottoms of the lenses handle close-up needs because you're typically looking down, such as when you’re scrolling on your phone.
When you first get progressive lenses, it may take some time to adjust how you move your eyes up and down the lenses to accommodate your vision needs. Rest assured, once you’ve got it down, you’ll be able to quickly transition from close viewing to far viewing very quickly.
So, if you want to see clearly, whether you’re driving or reading a book, and you’re tired of swapping out glasses to do so, progressive lenses are an amazingly effective and, not to mention cosmetically pleasing, solution.
To schedule an eye exam to get your all-in-one vision needs handled with progressive lenses, please contact us at one of our offices in Boston or Newton Upper Falls, Massachusetts
