Customers often ask us about the weird moment when you look up from close work to distance, and your sight takes a moment to catch up. It happens to specs wearers and those with no spectacle prescription. As it’s come up quite a bit we thought we’d go through this for you.
Lenses are not just the bits of plastic or glass set in spectacle frames. We all have a lens inside each eye – it’s called the crystalline lens, and along with other structures in your eyes in helps you to focus. The lens is a clever little thing that changes shape to let you focus both close too and far away. It does all this work without us even having to think about it, although as we get older – forty onwards – it loses this ability and we need reading glasses.
At any age though, the lens is still doing it’s best to help you see close up. This is why you get that little visual gap – as you focus on different distances your lens and your brain have to catch up and let you re-focus. Of course you notice it more if you’re tired, or have been concentrating hard on anything at a specific distance. It’s nothing to worry about, although you should always make sure that your prescription glasses are up to date, to give your eyes all the help they need.
When you’re working close too, give your eyes a frequent rest by looking around the room at different distances, and remembering to blink, as this washes a fresh layer of tears across the eyes to lubricate them. If you only wear reading glasses you could consider swapping to varifocals, as they let you look comfortably into the distance without having to take your specs off.