How can I focus my eyes after removing reading glasses?

Question

I am in my early 40's and am having to resort to using reading glasses to read small print when I'm wearing my contacts. When I remove the reading glasses, it's almost impossible to read at all or see anything on my computer. It takes a while for my eyes to adjust. Is there a way to get my eyes to refocus quicker?

(I do have multi-focal lens' now but don't always wear these. They're expensive and a pain because you have to take them out every night.)

Answer 1

All I can think of is that you are probably staying focused up close for too long at a time to begin with.

Try and get in the habit of looking away from the monitor every few minutes, just for a few seconds, over your reading glasses of course, to let your eyes refocus at a distance.

I do that constantly , and don't have any focusing problems when I take the readers off.

But of course, the fact you have contacts on that are too strong for closeup, doesn't help in focusing faster either.

Answer 2

It depends on the power of the readers. If you are in your early 40s, most of the time the lowest power you can get over the counter for computer/reading is +1.00. However, if you buy an rx with +0.50, this will improve your intermediate working distance and eliminate some of the focus issues. You can purchase this online on some web sites by typing in "computer glasses" on google. You could also have your ophthalmologist prescribe a +0.50 reader to wear over your contacts. Remember, readers for near work and computer vision are only magnifiers. The larger the number, the more magnification, but the smaller the working distance. The smaller the number i.e. +0.50, the less magnification but the greater the working distance (intermediate vision) and the less trouble with re-focusing.

Good luck!

Adam Koenigsberg MD

Ophthalmologist

Jacksonville FL

Answer 3

Our eyes get stiff and freeze up when we use them incorrectly. When we stare and strain and diffuse our eyes get tight and tense. This tension also squeezes our eyes out of shape and gives us more and more blurry vision. Artificial corrections(glasses, contacts, lasik) also encourage more incorrect vision habits and more blur. Resting from the computer can break the staring and straining but if we don't know how we are using our eyes, mind, and body together incorrectly it doesn't really help.

People with perfect vision can use the computer and tv all they like with ease and their vision only gets stronger with challenging activities. Our eyes are plenty strong muscle wise and they don't need to be exercised(eye pushups, eye aerobics, eye yoga). In order for us to regain our natural relaxed dynamic vision we need to unlearn the incorrect vision habits, reintegrate the correct vision behaviors, and undo the damage of artificial corrections.