Reading glasses to reverse nearsightedness?

[annoyinggirl]

This has to do with optics and a bit about biology.

plus lenses (reading glasses) help the help the eyes focus on things that are close while while minus lens do the opposite. What is your opinion about using reading glasses (wearing them while reading and doing other near work) to reverse or at least stabilize the progression of myopia?

 

[davenn]

plus lenses (reading glasses) help the help the eyes focus on things that are further away

Maybe you have that around the wrong way ?

reading glasses + lenses help the eyes focus on closer things
I had no trouble focussing on far things but couldn't focus on near things ... print in books/computer screen, my electronics components
Over a period of ~ 6 years I went from +1.0 to +1.5 to +2.0 to +2.5
After that I had to go the prescription glasses way to get any further benefit

cheers
Dave

 

[annoyinggirl]

Yes, thanks Dave for the correction. I corrected my OP.

Dave, how old are you? People tend to lose the ability to focus on near objects with age. I know only two young people who have farsightedness, but almost everyone my age (21 years old) I know is myopic.

 

[davenn]

hi :)

I started to loose close focussing at ~ 47 yrs, am now not far off 55

My wife is the opposite, she has great close vision but needs glasses to drive ... to see anything clearly at around 30 metres or more away

I find I have to constantly review my posts/typing on forums etc
not that I can't spell but that I don't see the keyboard clearly and do lots of typos hahaha

cheers
Dave

 

[dauto]

Is the question here whether or not people should use reading glasses? Really?

 

[berkeman]

This has to do with optics and a bit about biology.

plus lenses (reading glasses) help the help the eyes focus on things that are close while while minus lens do the opposite. What is your opinion about using reading glasses (wearing them while reading and doing other near work) to reverse or at least stabilize the progression of myopia?

Is the question here whether or not people should use reading glasses? Really?

When I was in undergrad (late 1970s), I found that lots of reading/studying was causing my eyes to lose the ability to relax back to far distance vision. I spoke with my eye doctor, and he said that at that time, there was a controversial idea that using + reading glasses when studying helped the eye's focus muscles from getting so fatigued and not being able to relax back to distance vision. He said at that time that about half of the eye doctors were in each camp about whether this worked or not. He said that he personally thought it did make a difference, so I tried it and have been happy with the results ever since.

There must be a number of studies and some kind of consensus by now. Maybe somebody reading this thread could post some links to such peer-reviewed studies...?

 

[dauto]

I think if you had trouble relaxing your eye muscles you probably had some sight problem to begin with. No surprise wearing glasses helped you...

 

[annoyinggirl]

I think if you had trouble relaxing your eye muscles you probably had some sight problem to begin with. No surprise wearing glasses helped you...

You obviously have no idea how the eye works or the fact that there are multiple types of glasses out there. In short, the ciliary muscle is responsible for accommodation of the eye's focal point. when stressed or predisposed to myopia/farsightedness, it sometimes doesn't re-accommodate. Granted, genetics plays a huge part in vision, as some people seem to be immune to myopia no matter how much near work they do with their eyes. However, most of those who are predisposed to myopia wouldn't develop myopia without actually doing near work. It seems that focusing on near objects is the trigger that is necessary for most people to develop myopia. Why else do you think that 200 years ago (when high school graduation rate was below 10 percent), myopia affected only a very small percent of the population and was almost unheard of?

 

[annoyinggirl]

When I was in undergrad (late 1970s), I found that lots of reading/studying was causing my eyes to lose the ability to relax back to far distance vision. I spoke with my eye doctor, and he said that at that time, there was a controversial idea that using + reading glasses when studying helped the eye's focus muscles from getting so fatigued and not being able to relax back to distance vision. He said at that time that about half of the eye doctors were in each camp about whether this worked or not. He said that he personally thought it did make a difference, so I tried it and have been happy with the results ever since.

There must be a number of studies and some kind of consensus by now. Maybe somebody reading this thread could post some links to such peer-reviewed studies...?

This is very interesting! Thanks for sharing! So you've been wearing reading glasses since the late 70's? What is your vision now? Or what was your vision for most of the time between the late 70's and now?

 

[Evo]

You obviously have no idea how the eye works or the fact that there are multiple types of glasses out there. In short, the ciliary muscle is responsible for accommodation of the eye's focal point. when stressed or predisposed to myopia/farsightedness, it sometimes doesn't re-accommodate. Granted, genetics plays a huge part in vision, as some people seem to be immune to myopia no matter how much near work they do with their eyes. However, most of those who are predisposed to myopia wouldn't develop myopia without actually doing near work. It seems that focusing on near objects is the trigger that is necessary for most people to develop myopia. Why else do you think that 200 years ago (when high school graduation rate was below 10 percent), myopia affected only a very small percent of the population and was almost unheard of?

Myopia (nearsightedness) is the ability to see things clearly that are nearby, distant objects are blurred. People with myopia do not need glasses to do close work as they can see them clearly. I've always had myopia, now I am starting to get presbyopia.

As a person ages, they can develop a condition called presbyopia where a person that once was able to see near objects clearly, now has difficulty.

Presbyopia is a condition where, with age, the eye exhibits a progressively diminished ability to focus on near objects. Presbyopia’s exact mechanisms are not known with certainty; the research evidence most strongly supports a loss of elasticity of the crystalline lens, although changes in the lens’ curvature from continual growth and loss of power of the ciliary muscles (the muscles that bend and straighten the lens) have also been postulated as its cause. Like gray hair and wrinkles, presbyopia is a symptom caused by the natural course of aging. The first signs of presbyopia – eyestrain, difficulty seeing in dim light, problems focusing on small objects and/or fine print – are usually first noticed between the ages of 40 and 50. The ability to focus on near objects declines throughout life, from an accommodation of about 20 dioptres (ability to focus at 50 mm away) in a child, to 10 dioptres at age 25 (100 mm), and levels off at 0.5 to 1 dioptre at age 60 (ability to focus down to 1–2 meters only). The expected, maximum, and minimum amplitudes of accommodation in diopters (D) for a corrected patient of a given age can be estimated using Hofstetter's formulas: Expected amplitude (D) = 18.5 - 0.3 x (age in years), Maximum amplitude (D) = 25 - 0.4 x (age in years), Minimum amplitude (D) = 15 - 0.25 x (age in years).[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbyopia

A person that can see clearly in the distance, but not so well close up is called Hyperopia (farsightedness).

http://www.webmd.com/eye-health/tc/farsightedness-hyperopia-topic-overview

 

[Evo]

When I was in undergrad (late 1970s), I found that lots of reading/studying was causing my eyes to lose the ability to relax back to far distance vision. I spoke with my eye doctor, and he said that at that time, there was a controversial idea that using + reading glasses when studying helped the eye's focus muscles from getting so fatigued and not being able to relax back to distance vision. He said at that time that about half of the eye doctors were in each camp about whether this worked or not. He said that he personally thought it did make a difference, so I tried it and have been happy with the results ever since.

There must be a number of studies and some kind of consensus by now. Maybe somebody reading this thread could post some links to such peer-reviewed studies...?

Is this something like you're looking for?

In a randomized clinical trial designed to test the efficacy of bifocal lenses for the control of juvenile myopia, each of 207 children between the ages of 6 and 15 years wore single vision lenses, +1.00 D add bifocals, or +2.00 D add bifocals for a period of 3 years. For the 124 subjects who completed the study, the mean changes in refraction were found to be -0.34 D per year for subjects wearing single vision lenses, -0.36 D per year for those wearing +1.00 D add bifocals, and -0.34 D per year for those wearing +2.00 D add bifocals. These differences were not statistically significant.

http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/3307440

Also interesting paper about myopia.

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/myokid.htm

 

[Borek]

Why else do you think that 200 years ago (...), myopia affected only a very small percent of the population and was almost unheard of?

Do you have any source for that?

 

[Integral]

Myopia has been with mankind for along time. I have read (no source available) that the ancient myopic's were responsible for much of the fine etching done on ancient artifacts. Myopia moves the focus point very close to the eye. Personally I focus about 3.5in from my eyes. This corresponds to something like a 3x microscope. If I really need to examine something I take off my glasses and getting up close. Does wonders.

 

[annoyinggirl]

Myopia has been with mankind for along time. I have read (no source available) that the ancient myopic's were responsible for much of the fine etching done on ancient artifacts. Myopia moves the focus point very close to the eye. Personally I focus about 3.5in from my eyes. This corresponds to something like a 3x microscope. If I really need to examine something I take off my glasses and getting up close. Does wonders.

I'm sure it has, but I'm also sure that the percentage of people it has affected skyrocketed after the industrial revolution.

 

[annoyinggirl]

Do you have any source for that?

I read that somewhere a long time ago. I'll look into it to find a source

 

[DrClaude]

The evidence for an increase of myopia seems to be mixed:

According to a review of five nationwide prevalence surveys carried out in Taiwan between 1983 and 2000, the prevalence of myopia steadily and significantly increased among children aged from 7–18 years. The magnitude of increase in prevalence over the 17 years varied between 14% (for children aged between 16 and 18 years) and 262% (for 7-year-old children).³² A similar trend was reported in another review of change in myopia prevalence over 30 years in the United States between 1971 and 2004. Among all age groups in which the prevalence of myopia was shown to be significantly increased over three decades, the prevalence of myopia in schoolchildren aged 12–17 years increased from 12.0% (between 1971 and 1972) to 31.2% (between 1999 and 2004).³³ A cross-sectional study comparing myopia prevalence over two generations of Singaporean Indians aged over 40 years found the prevalence of both myopia and high myopia in the first-generation immigrants was significantly lower than in the second-generation immigrants (myopia: 23.4% vs 30.2%, high myopia: 2.5% vs 4.8%).¹²

The trend towards higher rates of myopia by these previous studies, however, was not replicated in a study in Hong Kong. An analysis of changes over two decades in the prevalence of myopia among Chinese schoolchildren showed similar prevalence rates in the early 1990s and from 2005 to 2010.¹³ In Finland, a review of studies in the 20th century showed a (relatively) constant prevalence of myopia in children aged 7–8 years over the recent more than 20 years, whereas the prevalence rate almost doubled in children age 14–15 years.¹¹ In further contrast to the widely reported trend of increasing prevalence of myopia over recent decades, a retrospective study comparing myopia prevalence of Danish conscripts in years 1882, 1964, and 2004 showed a significant decrease in myopia prevalence over time,³⁴ although the comparability has been questioned because of difference in study methodologies in different years.³⁵

Source: P.J. Foster and Y. Jiang, Epidemiology of myopia, Eye 28, 202 (2014)
doi:10.1038/eye.2013.280

 

[henrycalvin]

I just turned 46 in May... I wore glasses most of my life when I had Lasik in 2004 (fior distance) the reading glasses need was happening slowly but it seems in the last few month lik POW!
I actually am still ok with most things, I can work, type, read most things but up close I can't do anyuthing. I got a metal splinter in my finger Monday and I could not get it out without glasses. I can't cut my nails without glasses. I friggen HATE IT! I have been 10 year glasses free and now I need them sometimes.