Heya!
Greetings to all scientists and science enthusiasts of our community, it is a pleasure to be here once again, Happy New Month to all of us once again and I do hope that the month is already treating us well. I wish us all a blissful and successful month, cheers to greatness in the unknown.
So yeah, as usual, I am about health, ocular health to be exact and today I want to speak briefly about glasses or lenses, I am hoping that we all get to learn a thing or two from what I have to share today and that this knowledge benefits a dear reader or a friend or family of a reader. So without wasting much time let's zoom into our topic of discussion.
Hello Doc, My Glasses Need a Change
A lot of times patient knows when their glasses need a change even before they visit the eye clinic for perhaps their routine care. If you have been given glasses or lenses from the eye unit then you may probably remember a statement from your health provider advising that you may need to replace your lens at least every 2 years.
If you were as curious as I may have been, you would have asked your Optometrist why this is so? A lot of patients do not ask though, some assume that's the life span of the lens and that after that period the lens would not work anymore or the power would have been depleted.
Depending on how meticulous you are about your lens wear and its usage you actually end up using your lens for more than 2 years, that would also depend on your eye's general health though, and as to whether your errors do not progress over the years. The 2-year mark is not a definitive thing, individuals with progressive myopia and other conditions could end up changing their lens within about 6 months, a year, or even less.
The reason why your doctor would normally advise the two-year mark is that within that period, your eye normally may have gone through enough changes would warrant a change in your prescription, there may have been an increase or a decrease. Also, by that period your lens may have worn off a bit, it may have accumulated some dirt within areas you couldn't clean off, or may have gotten scratched such that the quality of vision is affected to an extent.
When the latter happens before the two-year mark, your vision would be already affected and you may not be able to wait for the stipulated period and so you may need to come in earlier for that change, however, if you happen to have a stable error which neither progress nor declines in power, then if you are careful with your lens and take very good care of it you wouldn't have much to worry about. I have seen a patient use his lens for about 5 years before a change because he took very good care of it.
So Change Your Lens
So if you feel there's a need to change your lens then it is probably due to change, to take a visit to your Optometrist for assessment, that said, please do well to have your eyes checked at least once every year and be more conscious about your ocular health because as I always say, your eyes are the window to the beauty of this world.
It is a pleasure to serve again today, I hope you enjoyed the read and got a thing or two from today's lesson. Thank you for reading and for your time, stay safe, have a wonderful time, and do well to avoid over-the-counter drugs without proper care or diagnosis. Ciao!
Further Reading
Atilla, H., Kaya, E., & Erkam, N. (2009). Emmetropization in anisometropic amblyopia. Strabismus, 17(1), 16–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/09273970802678057.
Bao, J., Huang, Y., Li, X., Yang, A., Zhou, F., Wu, J., Wang, C., Li, Y., Lim, E. W., Spiegel, D. P., Drobe, B., & Chen, H. (2022). Spectacle Lenses With Aspherical Lenslets for Myopia Control vs Single-Vision Spectacle Lenses: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA ophthalmology, 140(5), 472–478. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2022.0401