With new glasses, what happens with the strange feeling you get?

Question

what actually happens with the strange feeling when you wear a new pair of glasses for the time?

Answer 1

A very interesting optometrist I know in Chicago says the strange feeling you get in the beginning is something of a warning sign - that wearing glasses has created an unpleasant effect that the body does not like.  It also creates  something like a tunnel vision for people, both physically and psychologically.  

It does go away eventually because the brain stops paying attention to it and acting on it, just as one gets used to a bad odor or noise after a while.  But this does not mean that the odor or the noise or the stress on the eyes has gone away.



He advocates wearing as weak a prescription as you need for a given situation - such as a full prescription when driving, a weak one when talking to  people in a room, and none when going for a stroll in an area you know well.  This keeps the eyes and the brain from being put under greater strain than necessary.

Answer 2

They feel very strong and like someone is pulling on your vision almost. It actually feels really cool.

Answer 3

The brain is a remarkable thing.  It will attempt to correct any distortion you see so that you view the world as normal.  For example, when a person walks with a video camera in hand, the image on the screen will bounce up and down with the person's gate.  Our own eyes do not perceive the image that way when we walk.

When we introduce glasses that create a new form of viewing, the brain has to process this and reestablish what it perceives as normal.  Most people will adapt within a week.  If they do not, something may be wrong with the prescription or the way the glasses were fabricated and the doctor should be consulted.

Answer 4

Unless there's an actual problem or an unmanageable imbalance, it disappears as the brain adapts to the new "normal".

There's nothing special to the eyes about this.

With a new Rx the eyes have to move marginally differently to maintain coordination from what they were previously accustomed to.  (It also often applies when swapping from spectacles to contact lenses and Vice-versa.)

Suddenly the accustomed eye movement will be slightly "wrong".  

Non-eye examples: walking in shoes with an unfamiliar heel height, or driving a new car with a different pedal "feel" or stick location.

Or getting used to the movement of being on-board ship and then feeling unsteady on first going ashore...

Going to the countryside for weekend and being unable to sleep because it's "too quiet": there the brain is reporting *silence* as abnormal!

There are definite occasions where strain is being cause because an optical element is not correctly tuned, and that does need reporting back and solving, but even perfectly set-up new glasses are likely to have something of a "new glasses" feel to them.