Statistics suggest that up to a quarter of a million people living in Britain risk blindness from undiagnosed Glaucoma, a disease which can often be successfully treated with drops. Some patients need surgery, but treatment is straightforward and preferable to losing your sight. As there are no symptoms that the patient is aware of initially, it’s important to attend for regular eye tests.

Cataracts occur when the crystalline lens within the eye becomes opaque. It can result from trauma, UV exposure, or simply ageing. It’s easily treated by surgery, but 25% of people suffering from blindness over the age of 75 have Cataracts, and this could be corrected. Annually in the UK the NHS is responsible for over 300,00 Cataract surgeries.

ARMD – Age Related Macular Degeneration – is the commonest cause of blindness in the Western World. In the UK it affects the lives of over 600,000 people. Monitoring by your Optician can spot the earliest signs, when changes to diet and dietary supplements can help to control the condition. The very fast progress of the wet form of the disease needs immediate treatment, so early detection is essential.

Dry Eye Syndrome is the commonest form of eye irritation in the over 65s, leading to discomfort and problems with vision. There are various therapies which can deal the symptoms, no patient needs to suffer without trying different remedies and drug regimes.

If you have an elderly relative make sure they can visit the optician, or arrange a home visit. Even if eye conditions can’t be treated then solutions such as low vision aids might make a significant difference to the daily life, and everyone should take advantage of any treatments available.

Varifocals are a technology based product, and with each step forward, the lenses improve. The main difficulties that people face with varifocals are the width of the reading area, and the odd ‘sea sick’ effect that some patients suffer when the lenses are first worn. The reading area problem is simply a design issue, and with every generation of new lenses this is improved upon. Manufacturers constantly work on the reading portion as this the biggest stumbling block for wearers, so with each new prescription change over time patients notice a marked improvement.

The sea sick feeling is due to the distortion at the edges of the lenses, and for some, as they move their head the world swings around them! Some people never experience this, for others it stops them ever adjusting to the lenses. For the majority it wears off after a few days. Again, the designers constantly evolve the lenses to lessen the distortion and reduce the swim effect.

Another point to consider is that different types of varifocals have distortion in different areas of the lens, so what works for one patient will not work for another. If you’ve worn varifocals and haven’t got on with them, trying a new lens form will help you. Tell us what you had a problem with in the past, and what your current jobs and hobbies are, and we can suggest the best lens type for you. If you don’t like them, we take them back and give you a full refund – that’s how confident we are that we can make them work for you!

I had reading glasses, and after a nightmare meeting when I ended up with a raging headache and very tired arms when I forgot my specs, I started keeping one pair at work, one at home, and one in the car just in case! Then I started to need help for the computer, and couldn’t really see the dash board clearly either. This meant another pair of computer specs for work, one for home, and one for the car! This worked until I’d go home with the work pair in my bag etc and then end up with all of them in the wrong location! Then of course there were my sunglasses, which I wore for driving, but still couldn’t see the dashboard.

Exhausted by all of this, and fed up with my worn out glasses that got squashed in handbags and were constantly bent, I went back to talk to the optician again. I still didn’t need glasses for distance sight, but we decided that the time had come to go for varifocal specs. The advantage for me was huge – one pair of glasses that I could leave on all the time, so they wouldn’t get worn out or left anywhere. I could also have them going dark in the sunshine, so instead of seven pairs of specs scattered around my life, I had one pair that I could keep on for all situations!

This was life changing! My varifocals let me see to drive, at the computer, the dashboard, and all my close up vision. I don’t have to take them off and they’re always with me. The lens goes dark so I don’t need sunglasses, and they are clear when I’m indoors. The lenses looked expensive when I first got a quote, but of course they were less than my vast collection of specs and look an awful lot nicer!

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!!

Some of the most common problems that consumers have with glasses boils down to the same cause time and time again. It’s not the product or the optician’s prescription that means people aren’t happy with their glasses – it’s their expectations against what the specs actually do. So let’s try and repair this communication breakdown …………

My new reading glasses are really good for reading the newspaper but now I can’t see the Computer – what’s gone wrong?

This often crops up when people have their second or third new reading power. We first know we need help for reading because our arms get too short! We find we have to hold things further away to see small print. Reading glasses help you to see fine detail again, at a comfortable distance. Every time it’s strengthened, small print gets closer again, but you do reach a point when your eyes change a little more and the arm’s length or computer distance isn’t clear with reading specs any more. You need a separate strength for the screen, or Varifocals, which let you see everything at any distance.

I’ve been putting my new Varifocals on and off for a month and they’re still not comfortable, I feel much better in my old glasses.

We all need time to adjust with a new prescription or type of lens, but usually it only takes a week or two. The key to getting used to new specs is actually putting them on and keeping them on – don’t switch between old and new lenses. This will make the adjustment period longer. You might feel a bit odd for a day or two, but persevere with the new lens and soon you’ll forget you’ve got them on!

I had thin lenses but you can still see them outside the edge of the frame. So what’s the point of them?!

The issue here is the patient expectation of just how ‘thin’ is thin! There is a choice of materials which reduce the lens thickness, but many different factors affect the final look of a lens. The distance between your eyes, the strength of the lens, and the frame size all have an impact on the thickness. Thinner materials reduce thickness by up to 50%, so will always be an improvement on a standard lens, but with really high lens powers we can’t promise to disguise the lens edge fully.

The way to avoid these disappointments is to ask your optician or online optician as many questions as possible before ordering, and go back to them if you’re not happy with your glasses. Sometimes we can improve what you’ve got, or suggest alternatives that will help you.

I’ve always had perfect sight and never worn glasses, so it was a shock when I first needed help with small print. I struggled on for a while with ready reading glasses, but they looked pretty dreadful, I was always breaking them or losing them, and then I began to find the computer screen difficult too.  I discussed this situation with my optician, chatted to friends, and finally took the plunge after further advice from the InternetGlassesCompany. The specs arrived in the post with a helpful note about how to wear them. So I sat at my desk and nervously tried them on…

The small print was absolutely wonderful, and I could read totally clearly for the first time in a couple of years! It seemed blacker and sharper than before. I could also thread a needle and see things like stitching. The computer screen was clear, but the edges seemed to slope sideways.  I had been warned about this, apparently it’s because I have a little bit of Astigmatism, and is common with vari lenses anyway.

I worked quite happily for a couple of hours, but did suffer a slight headache. When I stood up the floor seemed to be on a bit of a slope, but much better than trying to look down with my reading glasses!

Although I didn’t need the glasses power for driving I did try them in the car, and it was great to see the dash clearly, and useful when I went to pay for petrol. You do have to turn your head more to see to the side, but I got on ok with this.

Two weeks on, I’m not sure how I ever managed without my varifocals. I wear them all day because it’s easier than trying to find them every time I put them down! The headache went after a couple of days, and I’ve adjusted my screen and things on my desk for perfect comfort. No going back, and I’m happy I stuck with it for the first few days when everything felt a bit odd. Thankfully my screen and my floor also now look like they used to!

The No-Effort Varifocal – Varifocals are wonderful lenses that give you back vision at all distances. They let you see near, far, and everywhere in between without swapping specs. The only drawback is that you so have to work with them, and compromise. You have to turn your head a little more to look to the side, you have to drop your chin slightly to see in the distance, and you have to get used to them when you first get them! Persevere, buy the best you can afford, and be grateful you don’t have to change glasses every time you try to focus at a different distance!

Wafer Thin Lenses – You can get lenses in thin material nowadays, but the higher your prescription, the more substance you have to your lens. You also get visible rings around the edges of the lens, which increase with stronger lenses. Brutal though it sounds, you have to be realistic. If your prescription is higher than minus 10 or plus 8, the strength is tricky to disguise. We can use the thinnest material possible, we can add coatings to reduce the rings, but your specs will never look as if there is no power there. Any optician who tells you otherwise is raising false hopes! So be thankful that you can reduce thickness by up to 60%, and be happy with the knowledge that lens materials are improving all the time, and we’ll do everything we can to make them look as good as possible for you.

Reading Specs That Focus Far Away – The magnifying power of your reading glasses is in inverse proportion to the focal length – in plain English, the more they magnify, the closer to your eye you’ll have to hold things! So for very fine detail you have to hold things close too, for bigger print you can have a weaker lens that focuses further away. If you need to see detail at near and far, you need to move yourself closer!

So there are our three wishes, if our Fairy-Godmother pops up any time soon, we’ll be as happy as our clients to get this little lot sorted!

Every optical establishment needs a qualified Optometrist and a Dispensing Optician in residence. The first step is for the Optometrist to look at your prescription and make sure it makes sense with reference to your age, optical history, and visual needs. Here at the InternetGlassesCompany we have a fully professional team who verify prescriptions and check with clients if anything looks amiss. Does the power ring true for your age? If there is a difference between your two eyes does it seem likely? While every prescription is different we do get some orders that would be a miracle of science!!

The next step is for the Dispenser to look at the choice of lens material and frame. For instance – a high plus prescription may be problematic in a rimless frame as the lens edges will be thin and may chip over time. A high minus strength will be very thick in a huge frame. They also look at your pupil distance, because if you’re petite and your eyes are close together, the lenses will be thick in a big frame. If they don’t think your choices would work they contact you to suggest alternatives.

They then consider your lens choice in relation to your prescription. Are Varifocals really suitable? Will a specific lens type be very heavy? Do you really need thin materials? Again, we occasionally have to verify with the client before we go ahead. It’s not in your interest or ours to produce a finished article that just won’t work.

When the order reaches the Lab, they again will look through everything and check that the glasses will do the job. Sometimes the Dispensing Optician will have sought their advice on technical aspects of lens finishing etc before they pass the job on.

When the glasses have been completed, success is once again assessed. If we didn’t foresee a potential problem then we start all over again!  Our precious work is shipped off to you with our congratulations on your choices, and we wish you happy ever after with them!

I could see my computer in my old reading specs, but not in the new ones. What do I do now for work?!

This is an easy one, and we come across it fairly regularly. To enable you to see to read we give you a magnifying lens that allows you to see small print and fine detail. When you need it strengthening, the focal length will be shorter than in your old weaker pair. You’ll see to read in the new ones, but not see so well far away. Just use the old pair for the screen, as they are what we would prescribe for a middle distance lenses. If you constantly refer to small print and the screen however, you’ll need varifocals or vocational lenses, to allow you to do more than one thing at once.

I love the look of my new flat lenses, but my table is weirdly sloped away from me, and the walls are kind of curving in!

If you switch from a standard to a flatter lens design you will see some distortion at the edges of the lenses, but it will wear off. It just feels very odd to start with, so the key is to put the specs on and leave them on! Your brain will adjust and after a day or two the odd effects will be gone.

I know I’ve got Cataracts starting and my sight isn’t as good as it was, but I can’t see as well in my new glasses as with my old ones. Are they wrong?

Of course there could be a problem with the prescription or with the way the glasses have been made, but the answer here may be about your Cataracts. The lens inside your eye will have little opacities in it, which obscure your sight. If the old specs are weaker and you’re not seeing as clearly then you won’t see the opacities as clearly either! The new power is probably showing your visual defects up. Get the spex checked out, but patience is probably all that’s required, when you are ready for your Op your sight will be restored.

If you have any concerns about your glasses or your vision then mail us at the Internet Glasses Company for an individual and confidential reply.

There are three aspects to specs for the garden, physical safety, glare/UV protection and your prescription. So much to think about! So let’s take it easy – safety is fairly straightforward and common sense. Don’t ever garden in glass lenses, pulling up a tough weed or strimming may fling tiny particles up that could shatter your lens. So stick to plastic, with an anti-scratch layer, and wash them before polishing after use. For heavy duty work with a chain saw etc, wear protective goggles over your specs. Many Gardeners end up with nasty scratches across their specs from branches, so preferably wear an old pair rather than your best ones.

If you’re out in the Garden for hours on end, UV can be a problem even on overcast days. Just wearing clear specs gives some protection, but consider investing in a UV coat if your life is spent outdoors. UV can trigger Cataract formation and Age Related Macular Degeneration. If glare bothers you, have a photochromic lens, which change to adapt to the light conditions, useful if you’re out dawn until dusk. If you’re strictly a fair weather gardener then a dark tint may be better, and useful if you snooze off for a well earned siesta!

Prescriptions become difficult once you need help for reading. Bifocals are annoying, as without the middle distance area pruning and separating tiny seedlings is difficult. You also don’t want to mow over your toes! Varifocals are probably the best option, as they allow you to see delicate detail and admire the view. So sort out your eyewear and pray for that Barbeque weather this year!