Any person who has ever worn prescription eyeglasses has heard a myth or two about wearing eyeglasses or contacts. Everyone has their little piece of advice and feels that they need to have their say to help to protect another person’s already not-perfect little peepers from further optical damage. Myths often start from some form of truth but then they spiral out of control and wind up being completely false. There are a few myths that are so common that everyone believes them but why listen to myths when you can have facts?
First, have you ever been told that when you wear eyeglasses you should try not to wear them all the time because your eyes will become lazy and your prescription will worsen? You’re not alone. Well, your new comeback should be that glasses DO NOT weaken your eyes. Instead, they aid vision. Your eyes and your eyeglasses prescription will change due to many factors – most being biological and genetic. The fact is that you should follow your doctor’s advice and wear your eyeglasses when he says you need to – whether full time, for reading, for driving, computer usage, and so on. Don’t listen to anyone else, your eye doctor knows what he’s talking about and he has the medical degree to prove it.
Another big one – especially from the elderly generation – was not to sit too close to the television or to read in the dark. The truth is that while these may, indeed, strain your eyes and result in headaches, blurry vision, and eye strain, but they don’t actually worsen your eyeglasses prescription in any way. They also don’t create an environment for eye sight deterioration. The best advice: don’t sit too close to the TV or computer but not because of eye sight deterioration. Instead, ask yourself why should you suffer from headaches and eye strain if you don’t need to?! That should stick in your head the next time you want to watch TV that closely. If you’re having a problem seeing the TV or computer screen, go visit your eye doctor.
Have you ever been told by your mother or grandmother that you need to eat your carrots because it’ll give you better night vision? Well, it’s a half truth. Carrots contain beta-carotene which helps strengthen your eyes and your vision! In fact, your mother may have been on to something if she recommended any kind of food to help your vision. Certain foods contain important properties that help your vision and can even ward off vision diseases! Will eating carrots turn you into a super hero? No. In fact, eating too many may cause your skin to turn orange. Will eating carrots help ward off eye disease and strengthen your vision? Absolutely.
An all-time favorite myth that won’t seem to go away comes from those who will tell you that although you need your glasses; the fact is that wearing them will make your eyes weaken over time. Your eyes may weaken over time any way through genetics and age and it may cause you to need a new eyeglasses prescription but, as I have said in point one – WRONG! Prescription glasses DO NOT weaken your vision – they assist you to see clearly. If you happen to have worn your glasses for a while and then remove them, you may be surprised by the fact that your natural vision is so bad and blurred BUT this is, in fact, the same view of the world that you had before you began wearing eyeglasses – now you simply have a better, clear visioned point of reference.
Hillary Glaser is a social networking specialist and expert in cross-media promotion, currently working on promoting prescription eyeglasses. She is the Director of Marketing and Special Projects for GlassesUSA.com – the easiest way to buy glasses online, which now offers free shipping on all US orders with the code FreeShip10.