Posts Tagged ‘long sighted’

Take the Weight off!

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011

Although we can send mankind to the moon and perform all kinds of medical miracles, one thing we can’t entirely do just yet is re-write the laws of Physics. Why do we need to, you may ask – but you would want to do just that if you are unlucky enough to be long-sighted………

Long suffering long-sighted patients have several problems when it comes to specs. Their lenses are thicker in the centre and thin at the edge, resulting in magnified eyes, heavy lenses, and increased reflections that interfere with vision. Also, when it comes to making that all important choice of spec frame, your prescription may limit your options if you want the specs to look good and perform well.

Fortunately, we can help you to make the best decision and end up with glasses you love!  There are two points for you to consider, to give you the right frame happily married with the perfect lenses. When choosing a frame, you need to find something small, evenly shaped, and certainly not rimless or semi-rimless – these will have exposed lens edges that will chip easily. Find a size that suits your face but always veer towards the smaller end of the scale. If you mail us your prescription and pupil distance, we can go through some suggestions with you. It’s always a compromise between what will suit your lens power and your face!

With the lenses there are three aspects that we can work on. An anti-reflection layer will improve your vision, and get rid of unsightly magnifying rings within the lenses. A high-index material gives a dense lens that is thin – just go for the thinnest option you can afford. A lens which is also designed to be flatter will decrease centre thickness and make your eyes look more natural behind the lens. This is called an aspheric design – we do mess with Physics a little here, just to make life that bit better for you!

Working all these little improvements into your new glasses will give you the best outcome in every respect, and don’t be afraid to ask for help – trying frames before you buy, asking our advice and taking the time to pull all this together will be a weight off your mind – and your nose!!

Varifocal Glasses

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Good Looking Glasses online

Friday, September 10th, 2010

If you need strong spectacle lenses to correct your sight, you probably know that you have to take a little more time before you make a decision on your glasses. A dispensing optician can guide you through the choices, but if you want to buy online the options can be daunting. Here are a few pointers to give you some ideas, and remember we’re always happy to help via e-mail or on the phone.

If you are short sighted, your lens power will have a minus sign in front of it. Your lenses will be thicker at the edges than in the middle, and may have unsightly white reflecting rings around them. From about power -4.00, a thinner lens material will help to reduce thickness and weight. Adding an anti-reflection layer will cut down those dreaded bottle-bottom reflections and improve appearance.

If you are long sighted, your lens power will have a plus sign. Your lenses are thicker in the centre, and thin at the edge. Your lenses will magnify your eyes, and from about +2.00 a flatter lens design will help to minimise thickness, weight, and the magnification of your eyes.  Again an anti-reflection layer will help to make the lenses appear thinner when people look at you.

Whatever your prescription, flatter lenses will help, so look for aspheric lenses, where we change the optics of the lenses to reduce the curve while still giving you the strength you need. Choosing a small frame will also help, reducing lens thickness and weight. For long sighted patients we can also make the lenses to fit the frame, rather than cutting them out of a large lens to start with. Making the lens with your frame in mind reduces the centre thickness and makes it flatter.

If you’re short sighted, a plastic frame will disguise edge thickness and look trendy! A rimless or thin metal will leave all your edge thickness on full display. If you’re long sighted, your lens edges will be thin, so you can choose a metal, but rimless or semi-rimless will make the edges of your lenses vulnerable to chipping or breaking. So think about the practicalities before you fall in love with a frame – you might not love it after the lenses are fitted if they look thick or are heavy.

So, a little time spent before you press that enter key and make your purchase will ensure that you love your new look. If you want our opinion on your choice, don’t hesitate to ask. We’re here to help you look good as well as see perfectly!

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Reading Between the Lines

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Out to dinner last night with five fifty-something friends, the conversation at one low point came round to counting grey hairs, checking out expanding waistlines and advancing wrinkles, and that other issue of ageing – reading specs! This was a hot topic because in the dimly lit restaurant only three of us could read the menu, which annoyed our waitress somewhat! The interesting thing was how six different people with different lifestyles have different ways of coping with needing help for reading….

Sue doesn’t go out to work but tends her small flock of specialist sheep which she hand rears. As she’s short sighted she doesn’t need specific reading specs yet, she just takes her distance glasses off! She then has to retrieve them from the barn or the paddock and wipe off any sheep dribble!

Phillip travels all over the world and is long sighted for distance and needs help for reading. He has Varifocals which go light and dark in the sun. This lets him see at any distance, and when work takes him to South Africa he has sunnies built in!

Jeremy is a GP, he uses vocational lenses for his desk and computer. He pulls them down his nose and looks over the top of them to talk to patients.

I’m bashing away at the keyboard all day, so I use an old pair of reading specs for the screen, and my strongest new ones to read small print.

Johnathan sells cars, he wears contact lenses, a distance lens in one eye and a close work one in the other. This means he can spot a potential customer a mile off and can always read the small print!

Rob just needs a little help for reading, but as a teacher he moves around the classroom all day, so he keeps ten pairs of ready readers in every useful location. He can also peer over the top of them to intimidate any troublesome students!

We had an excellent meal and over a few drinks we forgot about the issues of ageing – at least without our glasses on we can’t see the wrinkles!!

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The Perfect System

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

The eye is one of the most amazing organs in our bodies. Our sight is the most precious of our senses, and these small and perfect globes make sight happen by refracting light through it’s systems to help us make sense of our world. The eye is an incredibly complex and sensitive structure, all finely tuned, so it’s not surprising that tiny abnormalities result in visual defects and lead us to need help to correct our sight.

For perfect sight, light has to enter the eye and focus on the back surface. If your eyeball is too long, you’ll be short sighted. If it’s too short, you’ll be long sighted. Specs or contact lenses position the light in the right place so you can see clearly. If the curve of your cornea, the clear window at the front of the eye, is imperfect, then this will also create a problem with focussing.

Light enters the eye through the pupil, the black hole at the centre of the eye. It travels through the crystalline lens, a transparent structure that changes shape to let us see both close up and far away. Muscles hold the lens in place and stretch and relax to alter its shape and therefore its focus. If the lens is not the perfect size and shape then this will add to the visual defect of the eye. So you can see that there are several reasons why you may need glasses or contact lenses.

Once your optical system has been corrected and is working as it should, light reaches the light sensitive layer, the Retina, which lines the back of the eye. Here the image we see is upside down and in reverse! It travels to the brain through the optic nerve, where thankfully it’s put the right way round.

Ophthalmologists and opticians are lucky in that they’re the only clinicians who can examine their specialist organ without cutting their patient open! Thanks to ever advancing screening equipment and retinal imaging systems we can see inside your eyes and spot the very first signs of problems. This fantastic and beautiful system works on our behalf for every minute of our waking day, so look after it by attending your check ups and taking a few minutes to appreciate and maintain it.


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Get your Groove On!

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Making your glasses for you is not as simple as just popping slivers of plastic into your frame and sending it off to you. The perfect pair of glasses blends our expertise with your needs to give you specs which are comfortable, visually correct, and look great too. For the majority of powers putting your glasses together is very straightforward, but if you have a more complicated prescription then some combinations of lens and frame may cause difficulties. Let’s take a look at how they are constructed and what this may mean to you

The vast majority of frames have a rim which tightly holds the lens in place as the lens sits within a groove in the frame rim. With plastic frames we heat the frame which then expands so the lens can be snapped into place. It then shrinks back as it cools to keep the lens in place. Metal frames come apart with a tiny joint at the edge, and we then screw it back up to make it secure. If you are very short sighted then plastic frames may conceal your lenses more than a thin metal rim, and will give the lens edges some protection.

Semi-rimless frames have a nylon cord which sits in a groove around the lens edge. This makes the frame light and flexible, but if you are very long sighted and your lens edges are thin then they may chip easily. If you were to put pressure on the frame – sit on it for example! A lens may pop out, but will easily fit back in. If you’re very short sighted then your thick lens edges may be very visible as there is no frame to disguise it.

Playboy 5006 Semi Rimless from The Internet Glasses Company

Playboy 5006 Semi Rimless from The Internet Glasses Company

Rimless mounts hold lenses in place without them fitting into a rim, but we have to drill through the lenses and then hold them in place with screws or glued bolts. This makes the specs light but very vulnerable to damage, and they are not suitable for high powers whether you are long or short sighted.

If your prescription is strong them you may need to confirm your choice with your optician – we will always advise you if we feel your frame choice does not match your lens power.

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Slim for Spring

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

If you are quite long sighted you’ll already know that your prescription can cause you a few problems when it comes to making a decision on new specs. You have several potential issues to consider. Firstly, the thickness of your lenses will all be in the centre, so this can magnify your eyes, create weight and bulk, and make you see things as bigger than they really are. (Although the latter may not always be a bad thing!)

So how to make your glasses as comfy and cosmetically appealing as possible? You need to do two things – choose a sensible frame and invest in some flatter lenses. The frame choice is straightforward, go as small as possible to suit your face shape, and don’t pick a rimless or semi-rimless style. The problems that can arise here are that the lens edges will be made as thin as possible to make the centre as thin as possible, so any type of exposed edge will be vulnerable to chipping. Try some frames before you buy so you can have the smallest frame possible, every millimetre counts here.

For your lenses, you need to pick a lens made of thin plastic, and one that is aspheric in form – now for the science bit! Aspheric means that the lens is created with special curves that change across the surface, to remove bulk but still give you the correct power. Thin plastic is denser than usual so it is flatter and thinner. An anti-scratch coating is vital too, as your lenses will still be curved, and if you lay them down on a flat surface they will rock about and may scratch

Pulling all of these factors together gives you the best pair of glasses you can choose. All of these measures to reduce thickness will reduce the artificial magnification too, so your eyes will look their normal size – but unfortunately so will everything else!!

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