It’s only been a week, but I kind of hate them. Considering old-man bifocals now.
Hiya! Former optician here!
Have you taken your progressives in to have them adjusted or aligned?
Progressive lenses must be fitted in the perfect spot in front of your eyes to give you the best possible vision.
Once fitted correctly, they mimic the way your focus changes naturally by applying +power as you progress further down the lens, basically shifting towards spherical shape to “magnify” a bit, the same way the muscles in your eyes bend your inner lens to do the same!
In order to use them efficiently:
Folks tend to point their nose slightly downward as they view distance, keep this in mind as your distance section is at the top!
When looking near people tend to slightly cross their eyes and look down towards their nose! This is why the bottom of the lens feels stronger, its where you’re expected to read through.
Midrange is the tough one to nail. I recommend holding a piece of paper with text at arms length in front of you, find the spot where its perfect and slowly drag it from that spot to where you’d prefer to read. This will help to train your eyes to follow that track to vary the focus.
Dont give up! I usually recommend giving your lenses a few weeks to adjust to a new style of lens.
Remember though, while they may be difficult to use at first, your vision should be perfect when they do work, getting them to work 100% of the time is the part that takes effort.
I was going to send you a message to ask about glasses, but glasses are not Linux or art. That said, a Linux using optician/artist sounds like a pretty cool person.
You can DM if you want, Special Permission Granted 😅
How kind! Thank you, I’ll reach out shortly.
Do you mean varifocals? You definitely get used to them and get muscle memory in your eyes for where to look through. You need to wear them 24/7 though
We call them Progressive Addition Lenses in the US
There’s a few points to note
-there are 1500 different progressive lenses, and a lot of stire are still selling 35 yeae old lenses. You get what you pay for, and avoid chains.
-the eyeglass industry is full of reps who think they’re professionals, but don’t actually know fuck all about how they work. What the other person said about measurements is way more obvious with a progressive. Because of this, online progressives are dogshit.
-if you’re a hyperope, it takes more time to get used to the lenses. Plus prescriptions add more distortion, so it takes longer to adapt.
-the age you got the first progressive makes a huge difference. If you get one at 42, you’ll have a much easier time than if you wait until 60, because the reading addition keeps getting stronger and causes more distortion. Side note, if you’re over 42, you should be wearing a progressive. Stop lying to me and yourself.
-it takes about two weeks to feel natural, but you have to wear the glasses, and not switch back to an older pair. If you don’t put in the effort, you’ll be the old person with lines. If you wear them for two weeks and don’t get used to them, theres something wrong with the lens.
- get a premium, dual sided antireflective. Plus power lenses have more space between the surfaces, and double the effects of glare on the lens.
-don’t take advice from anyone you know, youtube, or especially reddit. Nobody knows any of the actual science behind optics, they just keep parroting things that sound legit. Even supposed professionals in my industry are goddamn idiots, including most licensed opticians i know. The only sources of info that can be trusted are lifelong lab managers, and the people designing the products and systems of manufacture. Everyone else spouts buzzwords like they know what they’re saying, or they saw a video once.
I’m an advanced optician running three offices and a lab, working towards my masters designation, and i’m infuriated to be one of the last professionals in this industry.
I mean, given all this, how tf is a layperson supposed to get the right product?
The same way a layperson knows how to get any medical intervention: taking the advice of a reputable qualified professional
But the guy said even the pros can be idiots. Sorta throws it all out the window.
Isn’t capitalism a blast?
Exactly
It’s not that optical pros are idiots, it’s that there are so few of them you’ll likely never meet one, and only a true professional can tell they’re full of shit. I can give advice if you’d like. I may be a rando saying Trust Me, but you’re not one of my patients, and we’ll never meet, so I have no reason to mislead.
By avoiding the companies that made everything confusing and filled the world with misinformation and buzz words. No chain stores, no online retailers, no budget places.
Find a local optometry office, and get your script and lenses from the same place. Don’t fall for branding, and understand you’re getting a prosthetic. You’re going to wear these every day for a long time, and you’re picking how well you’ll see.
Online and budget retailers have made billions by convincing the average person glasses are a scam, and that they’re all the same. Insurance companies save a lot of money by propagating the same misinformation.
The big players and chains, luxottica, marchon, warby, vsp, etc. Refuse to let anyone know the real technology they use in their lenses, because if you only know their branded buzzy term, you can’t ask for the correct product from a competitor. You can’t find out that they buy their designs, and don’t actually produce anything.
Anyone with a c suite of people to pay has to cut costs somewhere to pay out million dollar bonuses. They hike up costs and cut quality, and want to make sure you think oakley and rayban are high quality when they’re just marketing.
Years ago, some optometrists started something akin to a union to fight back against luxottica buying everything. That group was called vision source, and then, as the biggest fuck you in the history of optics, luxottica fucking bought vision source a few years ago.
On the other side, Anyone advertising two pairs for 89$ can’t afford professionals. You’ll never get the kind of optician referred to above from somewhere like that. With my knowledge base, if my offices went under right now, I would have every office around beating down my door to get me in, so why would I ever agree to put up with corporate bullshit, or working commision? But they stay in business by making sure everyone thinks all glasses are the same, so you’d be wasting your money if you went anywhere else.
As an ex lab tech and dispenser…
This.
Thanks for writing, saved me a job.
If you’re over 42, you should be wearing a progressive. Stop lying to me and yourself.
I don’t understand this statement, tbh. Or the odd antagonism of it. Are you saying all people above the age of 42 need to be wearing progressive glasses?
The antagonism? A copy and paste but you are right, that did sound antagonistic, sorry.
Progressive lenses specifically? No.
Regular check ups and some kind of prescription unless you are very very very lucky though? Yes.
Visual changes can be so slow people don’t realise how poor their vision has become. Its normal to then. Ask anyone who’s had a cataract operation for example.
I appreciate the clarifications, thanks! Yeah, I agree on that slow creep of vision loss. I’ve been nearsighted a long time and am now losing my reading distance vision. But I can still read without glasses, and so I do. But it’s probably not as sharp, and I suspect that might lead me to read less than I otherwise would
Most nearsighted presbyopes can read without their glasses. Presbyopia isn’t losing the ability to see up close, it’s losing the ability to change your focal length. The point of a bifocal or progressive is so you don’t have to put on and take off your glasses to see things. You just wear them and can see everywhere.
Useful clarification, thank you. I’m not sure where my vision is at. I definitely do the thing of taking my glasses off and back on depending on what I am doing. But even with them off I’m starting to find some print hard to read — mainly the small print on products. I’ll have to see. I’m overdue for a new prescription. Also getting intermittent splotches of white in my periphery so that’s a new fun thing to worry about.
Reminders of aging bodies + of capitalism’s negative impact on us: this post has not cheered me up today lol
I just laugh and call my friends “donkey” every time one of them uses “cheaters”.
We’re all mid/late 50s. Zero reason these self conscious puds shouldn’t wear glasses. I’ve had progressive for about 15 years.
I don’t remember exactly what I ordered, but it was from an independent shop and I think I picked the middle out of five options. I’m going to give it the full three weeks, but the narrow intermediate distance band, the swimmy effect on the near band when I move my head, and the dead zone in the lower corners are all very irritating.
The prescription itself seems spot on; it’s just how the progressive is laid out. It’s on me for not realizing that aren’t just sort of linear, but it is — well — mildly infuriating.
For the record, I’m very myopic, -2 and -4.25, with a fair amount of astigmatism, and +1.75 near. My last pair had like a +.75 but I don’t recall the same issues.
If you have access to an itemized receipt, I can troubleshoot for you if you DM me. Worth noting, an add jump from 75 to 175 will make you swerve for a week, but it can be lessened by good measurments and high end lenses.
There’s not really any true low and medium level products. They’re just older products. The mid grade was the top of the line 15 years ago. The basic progressive at most places is probably a Shoreview, ovation, or adaptar. They were great lenses, in 1993. But every few years there’s a new breakthrough, and the high end lenses at most places are the newest tech. Don’t want to have trouble with computers? You need a lens designed after everyone started working on one. Feel like your phone gets distorted? You need a lens designed after smartphones became commonplace.
I’ve worn progressive lenses for nearly 10 years now. I did get one pair on the cheap, and they were truly awful, unusable. That’s when I figured out that going cheap with progressive lenses isn’t worth it. That may be what has happened to you. Even with good lenses, it takes me a few days, maybe a week to get used to them when I get a new pair. Stairs are… difficult though, especially going down. I live in a busy European city, so I use public transport a lot, and that means lots of stairs. I can no longer run up and down them like I used to.
I found going down stairs wearing bifocals lethal.
I mean, Im still alive but it was very scary.I wish my SO would understand this… she leaves me in the dust (see also comment below)
The first time I got progressives and went hiking in West Virginia all was fine until we decided to descend the steep rocky trail. It was a horrible experience. One stumble and I’d probably need to be airlifted out. I had to go really slow. Everyone else thought I was being a baby and left me in their dust, so I was alone on the hillside unable to see my feet. It took me a full extra hour to make it back to base. I swore off that style of glasses. 10 years later I got a fancy car with a computer screen dashboard. If I wore my driving glasses, I couldn’t see the computer. If I wore my reading glasses the road signs were blurry, so I’m trying these progressives again. They sometimes make me dizzy. At first I only wore them while driving, but I’ve slowly gotten used to them. I can’t use them for [computer] work because I’d have to perpetually tilt my head up, but I often wear them for more than just driving now. If I’m going hiking I still use my old driving glasses. So I lug around 3 pairs of glasses…
So as someone who’s mid 30s and was proscribed contacts at 18 and had one blow back into my eye while on a motorcycle, then another crack (probably from my misuse) and irritate my eye real bad, and just give up on wearing anything. At what age would you say I should draw a hard line of making sure I get something so my eyes will adapt properly. I still passed the eye test at the DMV, but it’s gotta be close. Somehow I don’t think my distance has gotten worse from 18-35 because I can still read text on street signs and captions on TVs.
Just figured I’d ask because your talk about 42 vs 60 adapting to lenses, or if I could just keep ignoring it and adapt when I do get glasses eventually.
The DMV only tests your distance vision. Reading starts going at 38, is noticable by 40, and becomes a problem at 42. Your ability to focus at different lengths dissipates as your lens hardens from years of growth. If you can read just fine at 44, your distance isn’t as good as you think. If you’re distance vision is fine, you’re the guy holding his menu at arms length in a restaurant.
You’ll notice when something is up when:
-your phone is hard to see unless you hold it out further.
-you ever find yourself complaining about fine print.
-driving at dusk or in the rain is uncomfortable.
-you get tension headaches at the base of your skull from squinting out your astigmatism.
They take a month or 2 to get used to, give it time. Your brain sort of morphs itself to make it seem normal after a while. It’s very strange but true.
I personally went for only 2 zones, one which was mainly the strength to use a computer rather than read a book up close (though I can do that in a pinch, but I keep stronger glasses for reading books), and the other for distance. This feels very natural to me now, I can just see what I need to see but it doesn’t feel weird. I would never go for bifocals.
I don’t need long distance correction, but do need reading glasses distance correction. I got bifocals with no correction on top and my reading prescription on the bottom. When I was choosing types of bifocals, I was given a non-perscription demo progressives to try and hated them. I was then informed by the optometrist that there are a whole bunch of different lens styles to choose from besides progressives for bifocals. I chose “Segmented Ds” which look like this:
These do exactly what I want. If I’m in a meeting and have my laptop or notepad (reading distance) close to me, and at the other end of the room a whiteboard or projection screen, I pop out my bifocals and they work perfectly. I can see both the distance (no prescription for me) and the close reading distance without having to lift my glasses off my face each time. I do not give a shit if someone sees that they are bifocals. I’m using them to help me be the best version of myself, not make a damn fashion statement. I have not one time had anyone say anything negative about them, and indeed had a few people ask how to order the same thing for themselves. If I’m doing pure close work, I don’t use the bifocals and just use regular full field reading glasses.
I found I can’t do bifocals at all. When I’m reading, I need the whole lens. When I’m distance viewing, I need the whole lens.
So, two pairs it is!
So how do you drive?
Why would that be an issue? Just use the distance glasses, and your good. Or do you need to constantly read the vehicle manual to drive?
Being able to see your speedo I find is useful.
Hmm yeah I have to agree that’s a fair point lol
I mean when you’re alone on the road sure but if you’re in traffic just match pace with everyone else….
I’m now going to sound like my father:
if all your friends jumped off a bridge etc etc…
Besides that, are you honestly telling me you would take your glasses off in heavy traffic but put them back on when the roads get quiet?
No not at all, I wear my glasses full time, but devils advocate and all that.
Ha. Fair enough. 👍
Distance lenses. Dashboard isn’t close enough for readers.
That was the problem with the bifocals, I’d look down and the dash was blurry.
Fast and furious!
IMO you don’t need to see every detail close up when driving?
It’s helpful for street signs in urban areas.
They are super hard to get properly aligned. The absolute vast majority of people that work in eye glass shops have ZERO clue on how to set them up. They will claim until they die that they know how to do it. They don’t have a clue. And they don’t understand that. That’s the real problem. They think they know and they don’t.
And the more sensitive your eyes are to minute changes(tiny changes). The problem gets many times worse.
The best I can say is go to one person have them keep working on it. Do not let anybody else touch them. Keep working the same person. If you realize this person can’t get them right and it could take several visits by the way. Then blacklist that person and go to the next person in the same shop. Repeat this until you’ve gone through everybody in the same shop. Then go to the next shop and start over. Keep doing this until youcan find somebody who has a clue. It’s going to take a while. Trust me. I have exactly one person in Town that he can do it. By the way, my city is about 60,000 people in just this town. 60,000 population that is. And there are quite a few eyeglass places in town.
To those who are reading this, if you work in eyeglass shops, and you’re sitting there thinking, but everybody in my shop is really good. Then you have no what’s going on. And you’re part of the problem. Because if you’re thinking, everybody in your shop can do it that means nobody in your shop can do it.
Think of it this way. Imagine everybody on a baseball team says I am really great and everybody my team is really great. Then your entire team sucks. Because in every team, there are people who are really, really good and people are mediocre and people are bad. So if you honestly believe that, everybody in your team is really really good then you’re clueless.
So I guess the best advice I can give to the original poster is keep trying with different people and try to find somebody’s good. Or go to bifocals.
Sounds costly. And, at what point do you know they are properly aligned or not?
You get free adjustments from where you buy at.
Some places will adjust for free even if you didn’t buy there. Use those. By that time you are probably at next year and then your insurance will cover most if not all of a new pair. Then go to the place that won’t adjust for free unless you bought there.
Repeat until you find a good place.
If you have the money then just keep dropping the cash until they are adjusted correctly.
Hope do you know when they aligned? When you don’t have monster eye strain.
how do you adjust the lenses
It’s a common way of saying adjusting the frames.
Maybe I’m just confused because I have monofocal lenses, know my PD and the reliable width for my frames to be comfortable. I can accept I’ve had different experience than the norm. I’ve never had the frame adjustments for eye strain, just comfort. I also have been seeing and buying glasses from the same eye doc for 25 years, so that helps.
With those types of lenses that you were talking about, there’s only one focal point. So therefore, your glasses , the frames , could be a couple of degrees off before even notice anything. With progressive you have many focal points many fields going up and down the lenses. So if they are off even by a little bit.One eye will be looking through one field and one eye looking through another field.
Which means one eye will be focusing at one distance and one eye will be focusing at another distance. That’s some ugly eye strain.
For some people they can handle that. They just concentrate on the one eye or the other eye. But there’s a lot of people who they can’t do that. And that’s where the real problem is at.
But I do understand your lack of knowledge on the subject as a lot of people don’t understand where the real problem is that.
Apologies, I thought adjustment just related to the frames. Would they be swapping lenses, in this case?
Your first thought was correct. It’s a common way of saying adjusting the frames
Going to call you on the basketball team comparison: They have a simple metric for if they are good (winning). You are right about the rest of it though.
I hated them too. It takes a few weeks, but I still have a second set that’s only the near prescription, set for my monitor distance. The chicken-bob is the worst.
Make sure that you have them set on your head the same way each time. The glasses moving around on your head is a pain since those “zones of vision” move whenever that happens.
It used to be cheaper (bought some about 20 years ago) to have 2 pairs. One for distance and another for up close. I regretted buying progressives ultimately. Have they become less expensive?
Just a note for anyone getting older: when you get your cataract surgery, when they insert the new lens into your eye, they can make that lens a prescription lens. And one thing you might consider doing is requesting that one lens be made slightly long-distance and the other slightly near-distance.
You can do that before cataracts. They’re called Implantable Collamer Lenses. I got ICL surgery* done because my astigmatism is so bad I can’t do laser.
Thanks for that.
when you get your cataract surgery
Not everyone gets cataracts
they can make that lens a prescription lens
What would be the point of implanting a “lens” with no optical power?
I think what you’re trying to say is that the implanted lens can be varifocal rather than monofocal.
Same. I despise them and refuse to wear them.
I bought a pair of reading glasses at the dollar store and just pretend I don’t need to see in the distance.
I bought a pair of reading glasses at the dollar store and just pretend I don’t need to see in the distance.
Shhh don’t let every one know
Yes. I paid extra and got the worse. Switched back to normal glasses after a year.
Try and return them first; tell them they give you a head ache and you cannot wear them. Refuse to wear them any longer.
If the prescription lens place doesn’t help, dump them along with the glasses, consider your options and shop around.
I had the same experience 7 years ago. I ultimately went back to my old pair and even bought a pair of cheapos from eyebuydirect.com to hold me over until my insurance covered my next prescription.
Correct. Complain until it works. My place tried a less expensive lens and even tried to re-work those on my 2nd complaint.
They finally used Zeiss and my glasses are fine.
They don’t work in cars because your windshield is already uv treated.
So they’re kinda only useful if you walk a lot with your glasses.
You’re thinking of adaptive lenses (that darken when in sunlight). OP has progressive lenses, which are a kind of bifocal lens without a sharp dividing line between the near and far vision parts.
You aren’t wrong though.
That’s not “progressive” lens.
I only accept leftist lenses 😡
Progressive lenses are complete garbage! The fact that you need to wear them for several days for your eyes (and your brain) to adjust to them speaks volumes. Keep in mind you will also see very poorly for the first few days.
I got some progressive lenses for my second ever pair of glasses. My first pair did not have bifocal lenses. I wore the progressive lens glasses for a few minutes in the store. Took them off, drove home, and tried to wear them at home. I hated them so much that I went back the same day and returned them. I have had lined bifocals ever since and have not regretted it one little bit.
I like my progressive lenses. Clearer, smoother shift from reading to birding. I just had to adjust for maybe 10 days.
So you didn’t give yourself time to adjust and didn’t like them. That tracks…
