I just got my first pair of progressive lenses (archaically known as bi-focals to you non-glasses wearing folk), and my adaptation is going…interestingly. Are there any tips to getting used to these things easily? Do you just get used to things being fuzzy unless you’re looking directly at them? Does the headache and neckache go away fairly quickly?
On the plus side, being able to see writing without taking my glasses off is wonderful!
I was advised by the person who fitted my first pair to spend time in a supermarket, scanning the shelves from top to bottom and back again. It seemed to help, once the nausea died down. IIRC, it took me three to four days but those weren’t full-time days; maybe a couple of hours per trip.
Other than that, I don’t know what to say except good luck.
It didn’t take me that long to get used to them. The big trick is to look down with your eyes only for reading. Well, that and stairs - going downstairs took me a while to sort out.
I also have a special pair which is my prescription plus magnification throughout. These are the ones for when I’m looking straight ahead to read - trying to read music at the piano out the bottom edge of my glasses was horrible.
Good luck with them.
Oh, stairs - if this was my first pair of glasses, I could see them being an actual safety hazard. I’m starting to get used to either letting my feet find their way or looking straight down at the stairs - it’s just basically another degree of distortion further than normal glasses and stairs.
Supermarket, eh? I may have to try that.
am i the only person in the world left that has reading glasses, and distance glasses, and they are not shoved into the same frame?
Yup. 
Mine have sunglasses shoved into them, too, which I’m still on the fence about.
I’ve never gotten used to mine and hate them still after several years of wear. Next time I go for an exam, I’m going back to regular bifocals. The eye guy told me that you need to turn your head when you look at things, which makes it less blurry. It also makes you look like an idjit.
I’ve been wearing progressive trifocals for 10+ years and the only time I find them to be a pain is when I’m trying to see something in a confined space and I can’t hold my head at an angle so that I can see thru the correct part of the lens. It only took me a couple of days to get over the dizziness, and now I can even wear them on the boat underway.
I love 'em!
Nothing to add to this thread except that I just got my first pair of progressive lenses today as well. Cat Whisperer, am I you?
So far the lenses are driving me faintly crazy–the side-to-side fadeout especially. So I’m interested to read these responses. Keep them coming, please!
Nope! I have reading and distance glasses. I could never adjust to progressives. Spent several seasick days trying to find the microscopic point in the lens where I could read something. No joy. I told the optician I wanted lined bifocals so I could see where the different vision was. I told them I needed bigger lenses so I could actually see what I as trying to read. Did they listen? :mad: I’ve had glasses longer than they’ve been alive and this was the worst optical experience of my life. I could not exchange the progressives fast enough. I’m still steamed about it years later.
It turns out I need “prism correction” - my vision is different up/down or my eyes point differently up/down or something. My new eye doctor thinks I would never adapt to bifocals. Now I know.
Mama Zappa has had similar issues with bifocals. You are not alone.
It took only a couple of days for me to get used to them. Going down the stairs though - whoa! :eek: Coupla tense moments, I’m not good walking down stairs anyway.
I’ve been wearing progressive lenses for about a year and a half now and I like them very much. I know that they are usually referred to as “no-line bi-focals” but they’re really more like no-line tri-focals. When I had bi-focals everything within a couple of feet was sharp and everything from ten or twelve feet out was sharp but the area in between was still somewhat out of focus, and given that it’s usually within that range that I’m talking to people and looking around rooms and so forth, I didn’t like that aspect of them. Now I can bring anything I’m looking at into sharp focus just by varying the part of the glasses I’m looking through, and I like that aspect of progressive lenses very much.
I had already read up about progressive lenses online before I got mine and so I pretty much knew what to expect, so perhaps that made the transition a little easier. And I was advised by the technician at the optometrist’s that the best way to get used to them was to just forget I was wearing them, and I found that to the degree I was able to do that it made it easier to go through my day without constantly and consiously assessing what things looked like from different angles. People generally just focus on what they’re looking at directly anyway, and once you get used to the fact that you just have to turn your head a little more to look directly at what you want to see, they feel much more like your normal, uncorrected vision than do bi- or tri-focals.
Still, I read once that approximately 20% of wearers simply can’t adjust to progressives and perhaps you’re one of those. I never did have trouble with headaches or neck aches, though looking at the ground or going down stairs was a little disorienting the first two or three days. You might want to have your optometrist double-check your prescription and check the glasses to make sure they meet the prescription.
After that, I’d give it a few weeks at least and see if you might change your mind. I vastly prefer mine to regular bi-focals.
Oh, one other thing. Because of the relatively small are devoted to reading distance, progressives aren’t very good for reading while lying down. Even though your eyes are close together, there is still a difference in the distance between one eye and the page and your other eye, and that seems to cause one eye or the other to look be slightly looking through a more intermediate part of the lens and throws the focus off enough to be troublesome. I have to wear regular reading glasses if I’m going to lounging on the sofa or lying in bed while I read.
I’ve noticed with reading that the area that’s in focus is smaller than the width of a page of text - that will take some getting used to, since I’m a reader who reads a couple of lines at once. I’m also finding that my sweet spot for focussing for distance seems to be higher than with my old glasses - I’m tilting my head down and looking up to get it right, and I don’t like doing that - it seems to strain my eyes.
I did manage to wear them all day today - I can definitely see progress from yesterday. Man, my eyes are tired, though - they feel like they’ve been working out all day.
Yeah, now that you mention it, I remember feeling the same way about my distance vision being set too high on the lenses and having to tilt my head slightly down while simultaneously looking up with my eyes. I thought about having the lenses redone with the distance vision set a little lower and experimented with that idea a little bit by moving my glasses a little further down my nose. To my surprise I found that I preferred having the intermediate vision where it already was and soon got used to the tilting my head and looking up thing. I’ve gotten so used now to just moving my head slightly in whatever way I need to in order to focus on what I want to see that I don’t even notice things like that anymore, it all becomes automatic. Once you get used to wearing them and start to forget they are there a lot of this stuff just falls away. I don’t even notice the slightly out of focus areas at the side of a page anymore.
I hope your glasses will work out for you. I’ve had full lens glasses as well as bi-focals and tri-focals and I think progressive lenses offer by far the most natural type of correction because they give you the ability to focus sharply on whatever you want to see no matter how near or far away it is.
I got my first progressive lenses this year too, I adapted with zero problems. Maybe the difference between your distance correction and your reading correction is greater than mine.
The instructions for the lenses said to “point your nose” at what you’re viewing.
My biggest annoyance is lying back in the recliner and trying to watch tv, I have to tilt my head forward to get in the top of the lens. If you’re watching your feet as you walk, say going up steps, then you have to tilt forward also.
I wear distance contacts at work and glasses on the weekend. Bifocal contacts were a complete waste of time, so I have to use reading glasses for some things during the week.
I’m blinking a lot, too, since whenever I shift focus and hit a fuzzy spot, I automatically blink to try to sharpen the focus. This isn’t actually a bad thing, since I have dry eyes and could do with more blinking.
Every person is different. I put on my progressaives (much more than bifocals, BTW) it took literally 5 seconds to adapt and I loved them. After my experience, my wife tried a pair and hated them and could never get used to them. For the record, I don’t look down when I go downstairs, never have. The one thing I cannot do is read something down low. I guess straight reading glasses would be better for that. But my glasses are ungodly expensive because I need prisms. So I hesitate to get straight reading glasses. The cheap online places I have looked at don’t do prisms.
I never got used to mine. I still look over the lenses when I read or type. I’m going back to regular lenses next time.
20% fail to adapt? Holy Franklin that’s 1 person in 5. In what universe is that acceptable for a medical device? The opticians acted like I was a mutant, like I suddenly grew functioning wings or something. :mad:
I have enough issues with my regular bifocals – I imagine they’d quadruple if I had progressives :eek: