During your routine eye examination, your regular optometrist in Canberra tests your eyes to check if there have been any changes compared to your last visit. During this visit, your optometrist looks at your vision, particularly your optical prescription. Your optical prescription describes the power of your prescription lenses in your potentially new spectacles. Your optometrist explains how these prescription glasses can help you see better in the distance, relieve eye strain whilst using your computer at your office, or help your eye focus a bit better when reading your book. But how often do you need to use your prescription glasses?
Understanding Your Prescription Lenses
Your optometrist works out the prescription or the power of the lenses you require. This may be dependent on what vision issues you are having. For example, you might struggle to see at night whilst driving; your optometrist may fit you with distance glasses with a distance prescription. You might find reading fine prints on food labels and ingredients challenging; your optometrist may prescribe you some reading glasses with a prescription to help you focus on small fonts. How often you need to wear glasses depends on how frequently you do those tasks.
For example, you recently found that your reading vision is blurry compared to last year. You went to your optometrist appointment in Canberra to check if you needed reading glasses. Your optometrist has worked out the optimal prescription for your needs; however, you don’t do a lot of reading habitually. On further questioning, you can get away without needing prescription glasses if you move your reading material further away.
In the above situation, getting glasses may help with the comfort of vision when holding your reading material closer. But generally, if you’re not too phased with adjusting where you hold your reading material to read, you could hold off getting your first pair of reading glasses, especially if you don’t generally do a lot of reading.
Similarly, you lately found your vision driving at night is not as good as it was a couple of years ago. You don’t have any issues during the day. You visited your regular optometrist, and they’ve given you a prescription to help you see better in the distance at night. The question is, how often do you drive at night?
If you’re a truck driver and do a lot of driving during nighttime, it makes sense to get a pair of glasses to make your vision clear and more confident at night. However, if you spend most of the time indoors, then getting a pair of glasses just for nighttime driving could mean spending money on glasses you wouldn’t often use.
The Bottom Line
Most of us who wear glasses full time require it as our vision is blurry to the point that we need to use prescription glasses to do our everyday activities. Some of us may be on the “verge” of needing glasses to see up close or gain more confidence to drive at night. In those cases, it is not uncommon for those individuals to only wear glasses as required. Wearing prescription glasses doesn’t make your eyes worse or “dependent” on them. Prescription glasses are designed to make your vision comfortable effortlessly. Whether you must wear prescription spectacles full time depends on your discussion with your optometrist during your eye appointment.
Everyone’s vision requirements are unique, so their lens recommendation varies between individuals. If you’ve had prescription glasses before, and haven’t had an eye appointment in the last 12 months, consider making an appointment with our optometrist to get advice on what you need to safeguard your vision.