Greetings to all and sundry,
It is an amazing day today and the weekend was good indeed, it has been quite a while and I must apologize for my absence, sometimes the workload can overwhelm as and make it almost impossible to have time to write nonetheless I am here again and we get to learn once again.
As usual, I am about the eye as my profession demands and I seek to educate members of our noble community about the eye and its related issues and how best we can go about certain for our good and the betterment of others. Today we will debunk some ocular myths while giving you the facts you need to know. Stay glued to your screen...
Introduction
In our contemporary society, information is easily accessible to anyone with a phone, tablet or laptop, even TVs are smart now and can be used to access the internet, however the downside to this is the fact that it is also quite easy for information to be manipulated and the wrong ones put out there.
Many take advantage of this loop hole to create false news, send the wrong information which end up causing harm or pain to others. It is some of these wrong information that has resulted in the spread of health myths among people which is also having adverse effects on their health. Many have developed wrong ideas about clinical procedures and some treatment or management for some health conditions and today we are hoping to make an attempt at putting things right with regards to the eye.
We may not be able to look at every other myth out there however we hope to tackle the most common ones, Also it would be more interactive and fun if you could share what you may have heard with us so i can tell you what is actually going on, knowing the fact and the truth will certainly do us all a lot of good.
When You Wear Glasses You will Not Be Able to Take it Off Again
One reason i have to know through my patients as to why they refuse my spectacle recommendation is that they have heard or have been informed that when they wear glasses they will not be able to take it off again and they don't like the idea of wearing glasses for the rest of their lives.
The question i ask these individuals is, "what would you choose, bettervision or poor vision?" And all of them would want bettervision, this gives me the opportunity to explain what's wrong with them and why they need glasses. Now if you are here and you are refusing spectacles from your optometrist because of this same reason, what you need to know is that glasses are not drugs or medication to treat or cure a pathology.
Spectacles are simply optical systems that come in to help with the focusing of light rays into eye to enable you see well. Wearing glasses do not add any anatomical changes to your eye. And no one can ever force you to always have your glasses on, however, if you vision is that bad without your glasses you may find that putting the glasses down makes things quite difficult for you. This is just how your vision was before the glasses, the spectacle doesn't make your vision worse just because you put if off.
So yes if glasses was recommended by your Optometrist and i wasn't because of your computer usage or perhaps dry eyes or given after surgery but due to refractive error, then you may have to wear glasses for the rest of your life but know that this is not a bad thing in anyway and that eventually almost every single individual will end up having to wear glasses because presbyopia as a senile condition is inescapable and is best manage with glasses.
After Wearing My Spectacles Things My Vision is worse than before when i remove it.
This is one of the very common issues a lot of my new wearer patients present to the clinic after some few months of wearing their spectacles. It is "worse" with those whose refractive power is quite high. This is a normal thing and very much expected, not in the sense that it is true that their vision is worse, no, but due to the changes that the system has come to adapt to.
Now let me explain this change i am talking about before people with misconceptions develop more wrong notions. Now imagine you having an Ultra HD television at home, you have a high resolution camera and fon, everything you do involved high resolution and so the movies you watch have the best image quality etc. This is what you are used to all your life and then you travel to visit a friend and you end up watching a 480p movie on his or her tv which is not UHD.
You will realize that you can easily tell there is a huge difference between the image qualities and even if the movie is quite a good one, perhaps avengers end game, you may not enjoy it that much because of the resolution been rendered to you, you will naturally be inclined to want to watch and higher resolution and so when you have options you will always go for the UHD quality.
Now assuming this your friend to has always had 480p to watch all their life and you introduce them to UHD and they see the difference, what do you think would happen? He or she would change his habits and would definitely want to watch movies in higher resolution now, because he has seen the light and the vast difference between the two worlds.
This is how the brain behaves when we are given spectacles to correct our refractive errors. Initially your brain only had 360p images to deal with and that was the best quality it ever had, then your Optometrist correct the error and introduce it to 4K quality images, now your brain prefers the good quality images and because you have now come to see the difference, you can now appreciate how terrible your vision actually was before your error was correct and thus is why your brain is playing tricks on you that things are worst than they without the glasses now.
Things ain't actually worse, there's not difference in now and then, just that you can appreciate the differences in quality of images better. However, just to be certain do passby your optometrist if you believe your vision is actually worse, unless there is a pathology that may be coming in, your optometrist would do a comprehensive examination and would likely tell you what i am telling you now.
Conclusion
Let me conclude for today because the myths are a lot and we would do well to pick them up one after the other however if is should prolong this further you may end up bored with the reading and even leave the content.
And so do stay tune for a continuation in the days ahead, but remember when in doubt, consult your doctor, love you eyes, love your sight, avoid over the counter medication and do well to have regular eye examinations for the betterment of your eyes and your sight. Thank you once again for reading and i wish you a great week ahead.
Further Reading
Guan H, Wang H, Du K, Zhao J, Boswell M, Shi Y, Qian Y. The Effect of Providing Free Eyeglasses on Children's Mental Health Outcomes in China: A Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2018 Dec 5;15(12):2749. doi: 10.3390/ijerph15122749. PMID: 30563118; PMCID: PMC6313387..
Du K, Wang H, Ma Y, Guan H, Rozelle S. Effect of Eyeglasses on Student Academic Performance: What Matters? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial in China. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Sep 1;19(17):10923. doi: 10.3390/ijerph191710923. PMID: 36078633; PMCID: PMC9518476..
Zhang Y, Guan H, Du K, Zhao J, Shi Y, Wang H, Wang D. Effects of Vision Health Education and Free Eyeglasses on Knowledge of Vision and Usage of Spectacles Among Primary School Students: Evidence from Gansu and Shaanxi Provinces in China. Risk Manag Healthc Policy. 2021 Apr 9;14:1449-1464. doi: 10.2147/RMHP.S297265. PMID: 33859511; PMCID: PMC8044073.
Your blogs are always informative... and you have the most wonderful pictures!
Thank you @agmoore, I do appreciate your feedback always
Most people believe it looks odd when they begin to wear eye glasses
Yes especially those who have weird ideas about glasses from childhood, they make the most difficult of patients😂
Very informative post thanks
!1UP
Thank you so much for this information! a reminder to go to the ophthalmologist
Thank you too for reading very much appreciated
You have received a 1UP from @gwajnberg!
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Great article, i think a lot of people needs to be aware of this. Even i myself puts on glasses and initially thought that after removing the glasses, it worsened my vision compared to before i started wearing glasses. It was later i realised that my brain was already used to the clearer vision, thus making my vision without the glasses look worse than before i had glasses.
Great post once again.
Thank you Sir