We’ve written lots of times about that awkward age when your arms get too short, but still gets lots of enquiries about specific problems with your home or work situations. Here’s a quick re-cap and some of the answers to those questions.

At some point around your forties you become Presbyopic, which means you need help for small print and other fine detail. It can happen in your late thirties or early fifties, but it will happen to everyone, and we all have different dilemmas within our lifestyles that will now need addressing. To see detail you can hold things further away, and although this works for a while it gets more and more difficult. There are several lens options at this point – single vision for reading, bifocals, varifocals, and vocational lenses. Here are some of the suggested uses for them:

I’ve just been told I need help for reading, and the optician suggested bifocals. I didn’t like the line across them – what else is there? I’m short sighted for far away and now have a reading prescription too.

Bifocals are a simple lens with a visible area inset into the lens for close work, and distance vision all over the top. The line can be seen as aging, and there is sometimes a jump between the two areas. There is also no provision for middle distance, which is computer screen distance. We phoned the client and discovered that they use a computer all day long. Our suggestion was varifocals, which give you distance, middle, and close work, all blended together in one lens, with no line.

I love my varifocals for every day, but my monitor is in a fixed place at work and lifting my head to see it through my glasses makes my neck ache. What else could I have?

The ideal, as you obviously know, is to move the screen, but if this is difficult you could get vocational lenses. These are a simple type of varifocal, with just middle distance and close work blended in the lens. The middle distance portion is higher up, so you’ll see the screen without hurting your neck. If you don’t need the close work area, and you just look at the screen, you could have a single vision lens with the middle distance prescription in it.

I want to order a computer distance lens, on my prescription it just says distance and reading – what do I do to find the other strength?

When the optician tests you they just calculate your power for far and near. The middle distance or intermediate power can be calculated from this. We just need your age, and preferably how far away your VDU screen is. We can then work out what you need for the computer.

Mail us any time if you need help with your order or have a query, a qualified optician will speak to you and give you all the advice you need.