You’ll Be Enjoying Your Bifocals Before Long
Getting used to a new prescription in your glasses can be challenging to say the least. Headaches, problems with depth perception and field of vision, issues with eye fatigue, are all issues that have all been reported by people just getting used to a stronger prescription or a change in the focal points in their lenses. Imagine the complaints coming from people getting bifocals for the first time or transitioning from traditional bifocals (you know, the kind Benjamin Franklin invented) to progressive lens bifocals.
If you’ve been putting off getting bifocals for the first time, are anxiously awaiting your first pair of prescription bifocals, or are looking up web articles out of frustration with the transition, rest assured that the progression will happen and that your ability to see at all ranges will benefit from the switch. Have a little patience with the process, it can take up to several days, and you’ll be singing the praises of your new lenses before long.
Finding the Middle Ground
Vision is actually located in the brain, not the eyes. And your brain is a trainable, adaptable, miraculous organ. It will adjust. That feeling that the floor isn’t where it belongs, the jumping of images as you switch between the bottoms and the tops of your lenses, that feeling that everything is swimming when you walk around, all of these will pass eventually as your brain learns how to interpret the new range of data that it is being fed by your eyes, through your new lenses. Again, have patience, switching back and forth between your old prescription and your new bifocals will only prolong the adjustment period.
Progressive Lenses
If you’re making the switch from old-fashioned, line-in-the-middle bifocals and progressive lenses, you’re in for a transition as well. Progressive lenses have three fields of vision, near at the bottom, far at the top, just like your traditional bifocals, and an intermediate field of vision in between.
As your brain adjusts to the change in information that it is receiving, you may find that you need to adjust the angle you have become accustomed to holding your head at in order to see in the more natural way that progressives allow. It may seem counter-intuitive at first, but that’s only because you successfully trained your brain to use traditional bifocals back when you made the switch from single lenses.
It’s Worth the Frustration and the Potential Headaches
If you’re still on the fence about switching to bifocals, or switching to progressive lenses, it may be comforting to hear that the overwhelming majority of patients who make the switch based on their doctor’s recommendation are eventually very satisfied with the improvement in their vision. Hang in there, if you’re in transition, you’ll be happy with the outcome.
[Photo via: Flickr]