Freedom From Reading Glasses
 


Have you ever wanted to be free from varifocals or reading glasses? Well, contact lenses might be the solution.

Once we get to our forties, a natural process known as presbyopia causes difficulty in reading and performing other close up tasks. We strongly recommend every contact lens wearer has glasses as a backup, however you may want freedom from glasses in some situations, for example when out in a restaurant or to filling in your scorecard on the golf course. There are a couple of options when it comes to correcting this with contact lenses, and you can discuss which option would be best for you with your optometrist. These can be incorporated into most lens types.

Multifocal (‘varifocal’) contact lenses
Multifocal lenses contain multiple powers that correct your far and near vision, and everything in between. They do not work in the same way as varifocal or bifocal glasses where you have to move your eyes up and down to look through the correct prescription, rather in most cases the different powers are in concentric circles within the lens which your eyes and brain learn to concentrate on at different distances. They can take a little while to adapt to, but the majority of people adjust very well (in our experience more than 9 out of 10 people).

Monovision
This is where one eye is corrected for far distance and one for near. Most people have one dominant eye and this is the eye that we usually correct for far, and you switch to your non-dominant eye when doing near tasks. The success rate is a little lower than multifocals for various reasons including worse middle distance vision and depth perception, however they cost less and most people adapt very well to them.