Do you recommend reading glasses?

[empraptor]

I'm a young myope who reads ans uses the computer a lot. While I have a working pair of glasses, I wonder if getting a pair of reading glasses would put less strain on my eyes.

thanks.

[chip anderson]

If young means under 35. Save your money. If you are aproaching 40, they might help.Chip

[drk]

Chip, you are not correct, here.

Low plus will reduce fatigue, if a person has it, regardless of age.

I'm not getting touchy-feely over this, but it's true.

[Spexvet]

What is your prescription?

[Fezz]

What does your eye doctor suggest? You have been examined recently, right? Have you asked your optician for reccomendations? Just curiuos ;^)

Fezz
:cheers:

[empraptor]

The prescription on the contacts - which I never use - is -4.75D for left and -5.0D for right.

I don't know the prescription on my glasses because I tend to lose the darn papers.

I haven't discussed it with eye doctors. It didn't occur to me to ask the last time I was in.

I'm asking because I recall a presentation I gave to a class I was in last year. I went through a bunch of research papers available at a medical library, and I got the impression that the majority of research on animals and people suggest prolonged fixation on close objects increase risk of myopia. Also other research showed children who used reading glasses developed less myopia compared to children who didn't (both groups had same risk factors for myopia).

(edit: Not that this matters, but now that I think about it the difference in severity of myopia in the two groups of children wasn't large. It was large enough that it definitely wasn't a coincidence. And I think the first group of children used something like a bifocal, not reading glasses. I forget if the researchers thought the difference warranted use of bifocals in children.)

Anyway, there were also research on mechanisms of emmetropization and how those processes might work to produce myopia which led me to believe continuing to use normal glasses for reading would put the eyes under some sort of stress, although the details are getting fuzzy on me now.

Of course, once I finished giving my presentation I forgot all about it until now.

None of the eye doctors I've seen so far has suggested reading glasses, even though some of them ask how much time I spend reading or in front of the computer. They do recommend spending less time reading or taking breaks, but that's not always an option.

So I figured I might bring it up myself next time I go in for an exam. See if they would be willing to get me a prescription for reading glasses.

If I had to estimate, I would say I spend at least 6 hours a day in front of the computer or reading. Hmm... I didn't realize it was so much until I had to think about it and write it down.