It’s finally time, I think, to get some reading glasses. I’m curious how that works with contacts. I know you can wear reading glasses over contacts, that’s not the issue, what I’m trying to find out is if people with contacts need two sets of reading glasses. One for when you have contacts in, one when you don’t.
I can’t see anything (near or far) without my contacts or glasses. Even a computer screen is unreadable, unless it’s about a foot from my face. With them on, it’s mainly just that I’m catching myself moving things further from my face to read them (less blurry, more straining).
FTR, I do have an eye appointment coming up specifically to discuss this and get a script. I’m not asking for advice here with the intention of correcting my own vision.
Also, I know they have multi-focal and bifocal contacts now, but I’m not quite ready for that yet. A handful of times each day I think ‘I need reading glasses’, it’s not that I’m struggling all day long.
One other random question. Sometimes, late at night (so it’s dark in the room, if that matters), I’ll take off my glasses while I’m watching youtube videos since it’s not a big deal if they’re a little blurry and I can lay on my side. The screen is probably 18 inches or so from my face. Could the need for reading glasses be the reason that after about 20 minutes my eyes feel so dry I can barely keep them open? Under the exact same conditions, but with my glasses on, it doesn’t happen.
Also, to add to this, my distance correction has about a diopter of difference from one eye to the other and my near/intermediate is clearly similar. Not a big deal for finding glasses, but I’ve learned that plays into things as one eye being worse than the other seems have weird depth perception effects.
Wear your eyeglasses to the drugstore. Take them off and try on a pair of readers. Try reading with them. Then put the readers on over your glasses. Try reading with both on. See if there’s a noticeable difference with and without your regular glasses.
I suppose that would give me an idea. Oddly enough, as I’ve been trying to figure this out on the internet, I found that my situation isn’t unique in being able to see close things better or worse depending on if I’m wearing glasses or contacts. I always just assumed it’s because, since I only really wear my glasses after work, they tend to lag behind my contacts by one or two prescriptions.
It’s funny you mention a drug store. Whenever I mention to that my near vision is getting worse, most people suggest I run to the drug store and pick up some readers for a few dollars. The problem is that my vision is different in each eye and, I assume, $5.00 readers have the same lenses in both sides. I have a feeling that would likely make my migraines worse.*
My plan, as of right now, is to get the script from the doctor and use it at zenni. I assume I’ll end up getting a set of reading glasses that I keep at work (I’m not quite at the point of needing to carry them with me everywhere) and another set of bifocals or progressives for anytime I’m not wearing contacts (cuz I really don’t want to be switching back and forth when I’m trying to read (on the computer) and watch TV semi-simultaneously.
*I wonder if reading glasses will help with migraines. My vision, when holding something at the right distance seems mostly fine, I’m not straining, for example, right now, typing on my laptop with my glasses being on, but, who knows, maybe I don’t even know I’m doing it and it’s triggering headaches. Granted, I’ve had migraines my entire life, but still, anything to be able to take less Imitrex is a good thing.
I use reading glasses only when I have my contacts in. If I have my glasses, I can just look over them. If I don’t have my glasses or contacts, reading glasses don’t help. I’m just surrounded by blur unless something is very very close to my face.
I have astigmatism since college plus age-related far-sightedness that started some 20 years ago like happens to everybody when turning 40. Like the OP there’s a significant power difference between the two eyes.
Sometimes I use progressive specs which work great and incorporate book & computer distances.
I also have progressive all-distance astigmatism-correcting contacts. Which do not give me quite the same acuity as the specs, but are much more convenient. Especially when you factor sun glasses into the mix.
Lastly I have non-progressive astigmatism correcting contacts for distance. These provide a much better long-distance correction than the fully progressive up-close contacts. The difference is obvious in bright light but becomes totally decisive in dim light; the other contacts are just not good enough at night. With these I wear drugstore +1.00 readers when needed for closer work.
Each of these have their good and bad points.
As to the questions.
I rarely operate with completely bare eyes. I can see distance well enough to get by without any help, but anything within arm’s length needs a LOT squinting and still sucks. But when I do I don’t perceive that I need different power readers as between no contacts, and those that are distance-only.
Two thoughts:
For some reason while watching vid screens humans tend to blink less than when watching the real world. “Dry eye” has become an epidemic as our collective screen time has skyrocketed in the last 10 years.
What triggers your thought to take your glasses off in the first place? It may well be an unconscious feeling that your eyes are getting tired. Which is another way to say they’re already halfway to getting dry. And on the days for whatever reason your eyes are less tired/dry you don’t think to remove your glasses.
IOW - possibly you’re mistakenly ascribing the glasses or not as a cause of the later dry eye when wanting or not to remove glasses is really an early symptom of dry eye.
But my wife does. Her trying to read or do close work without glasses or when her glasses’ prescription seems “off” today is a very high probability trigger for a migraine.
Since we got serious about ensuring all her glasses are the same scrip and they’re updated every 6 months, her migraines have gone down a bunch.
Migraine triggers are highly individual. But getting you totally out of the squinting business might be worth investigating.
Is there a difference? I honestly don’t know, but I always assumed that reading glasses or cheaters or the ones you can buy at the drug store or the ones you get a script for and have Lens Crafters (or whoever) make for you, were all the same thing.
So, if it makes a difference, what I’m talking about is going to the eye doctor, getting my eyes checked, the doctor handing me a script and having a glasses place make them to those specs.
Annoying headaches, sure, but I’m thinking it’s not a migraine trigger for me. My triggers tend to take me from freeing fine to puking and doing everything in my power not to move because the pain is so intense over the course of a half hour or so (sometimes fast enough that people can see it happening). But I’m more than open to it being a possibility.
Yes, the readers off the shelf have the same strength in both lenses. But your optometrist can prescribe reading glasses to your own precise prescription for each eyeball. My optometrist is always trying to get me to do that, but my regular progressive lenses are already quite expensive, and the off-the-shelf readers actually work very well for me (despite having such a large correction that I have to order them online now or wear 2 pairs at the same time, much to my daughters’ mortification).
Ahh, got it.
My distance correction is -2.00 and (about) -3.00. A random close/reading eye test I found on the interet suggests I’m 0 (or close to it) and +3.25. While I’m quite sure it’s not accurate, it was a good demonstration of why off the shelf glasses aren’t going to work for me. If it’s anything like distance glasses, it’ll fix one side and leave the other side distorted.
So, I’d rather get the correct script so I can see well and besides, I’m due for a visit anyway.
I’m like @raventhief above: I only need readers when I’m wearing contacts, otherwise I can read fine when I remove my distance glasses. The difference in my eyes is at least as big as yours for the distance lenses and I do just fine with off the shelf readers that have identical strengths in both eyes. They’re kinda fixing a different problem so it doesn’t map onto your distance lenses.
Eta: my brother got laser eye correction. Doesn’t need glasses anymore … except for reading. He was forwarned.
Even before taking the random eye test, I the difference between my two eyes was easily noticed. In fact, closing each eye, one at a time (and being in the bathroom, so nothing was all that far away) is how I knew which contact went in which eye. I just always assumed my poor vision with things in the ‘intermediate’ range (say, from my elbow to my hand on an outstretched arm) was simply party of my issues with distance. Especially considering that my glasses or contacts make it, more or less, fine.
I have no idea whatsoever how (bad) distance vision related to bad (close) vision, so I don’t know if my distance script in each eye being that far apart plays into my close up vision having quite a bit of difference from one side to the other or if it’s just a coincidence. But, like I said, I worry about off the shelf readers because, when it comes to text about 12ish inches away, the difference is very noticeable, as in, I can read all the stickers on my new laptop (where my palms rest) with one eye, but if I use the other eye is difficult to tell there’s even text there.
I keep thinking about doing that, but it’s just so expensive. Even at the low end, ~$1000/eye, it’s still pretty pricey. However, back when I wore Air Optix Night and Day, it was the next best thing. Putting my lenses in and not giving them a second though for weeks, waking up and being able to see, not having to futz with them every day before and again after work, was great. If I didn’t start having some issues with them, I’d probably still be using them.
Hard to say. I’ve been wearing glasses since I was about 10ish (I’m 40 now). I barely remember not wearing them other than to say I don’t recall having issues reading the chalkboard in k-4th grade (got glasses around 5th). And since I was 10, I wouldn’t have even known what the script was.
It’s my understanding that young kids have considerably more flexible lenses that can adapt much better.
But my question/curiosity still stands. Do people that split their time between contacts and glasses typically require two different reading prescriptions? It doesn’t sound like something I recall hearing and I doubt I’m an anomaly in the vision correction field.
I’d say that really depends on what sort of corrections are in those contacts and in those glasses. As I said in my earlier post (but perhaps was lost in that wall o’ words), with some of my contacts & glasses I wear readers and with others not.
So for me the difference is between readers with zero correction (i.e. no readers) and readers with +1.00 in each eye.
I could imagine choosing to get glasses and contacts to different prescriptions. Or one being years out of date versus the other and hence different. That might well be enough to require different readers with each.
From a practical POV, for any given degree of power needed or prescription complexity, contacts are more expensive than glasses, and especially more expensive than zenni glasses. So you might choose to get fully progressive spectacles so readers are not required, but non-progressive contacts needing readers. That’s pretty much the solution I backed into after years of experimenting.
Given your comments about the big power difference between your two eyes, ISTM that planning on drug store readers is not likely to be successful. So you may well need prescription readers to add to your simpler contacts.
Assuming you can adapt to progressive lenses there’d be no reason to layer separate readers over spectacles. If you can’t adapt to progressives (as many people cannot), the conventional lined bifocals become the next best choice. In either case the up-close correction is built into the spectacles.