Did you go to the optometrist, and they handed you a paper that says, -5.50 diopters?

And then they told you that you need to spend a bunch of money on glasses.  It was all very confusing probably and nobody is giving you clear answers.

That’s all by design.  And now you’re wondering …

Real Talk: Is 5.5 Eyesight Bad

Super super short answer, yes it is. 

It’s not as bad as Google claims:

That’s just so wrong, not even funny.  And Google “official” answer.

No you’re not blind in the “legal sense”.  That doesn’t even mean anything.  There is “legally blind” but that is if your vision can not be corrected.  Needing 5.5 glasses (-5.50) isn’t anything to do with blind, it’s just not awesome eyesight.  Don’t always trust search results blindly (heh) when looking at serious questions like this.  

Here’s something they won’t tell you, an actual easy way to know how bad exactly that “5.5” is.

Without getting all technical (more on that later if you want it), it means that without -5.50 diopters of help, you can only see 18.18 centimeters far, before things start to get blurry.   

That’s 7.16″ for all you stuck in non-metric world.  

-5.50 Diopters = 18.18 cm / 7.16″ Clear Distance Vision

Yea, bet your optometrist didn’t tell you that one.

Want to know that formula?

It’s 100 / diopters = distance before blur.

They don’t tell you this because you’ll start figuring out that the whole glasses and diopter thing isn’t that complicated.  And before you know, you start putting 2 and 2 together, doing your own measuring, and going off and buying glasses 90% cheaper online.  

They don’t want any of that.

So when you ask “hey doc so is 5.5 eyesight bad”, you just get a mumble-shrug-medical-sounding-words-words and a piece of paper telling you that you need to buy those glasses.

If you want to know why your eyesight sucks, and what this whole scheme is about, I made a short video series explaining it all.

Spoiler, glasses are a subscription.  And also spoiler and maybe I’m a magician, I know that you (yes, you reading this) didn’t start out with -5.50.  Or even -4 or probably not even -3.  Nope.  

You started out somewhere between -1 and -2 at most.

And then after you wore those for a year or those, things were somehow less clear again.  And then you needed stronger glasses.

Veird isn’t it, jaaaaa?

And now you’re here being able to see 18cm or 7 inches before stuff gets blurry.

Yea, “5.5” is bad.   Perhaps a better questions though:

Is 5.5 Eyesight Bad, Permanently?

Let me put on the magician hat again, for this one.

If you’re here because you were asking that question, you probably weren’t at 5.5 (it’s really -5.50 to be accurate) for too long.  Something happened that made you ask.

So probably, if this number is new, then that would mean it’s going to keep going up.  If you keep going back to those guys.

Because that’s the business model.

If you want help with any of these terms, check our wiki for terms like diopters.  You stumbled on the Web’s largest resource for fixing your eyesight, so this is a great place to start researching.

There are about a zillion success stories of people fixing their eyes.

And to be more specific to your question:

Fixing 5.5 Bad Eyesight

I keep using this bad terminology of 5.5 because, that’s how you asked and that’s what search engines will look for.

Here are people who went through around -5 diopters in their journey of fixing their eyes.

You can improve your eyesight by about 1 diopter per year realistically, so it would take you about 5 years to get rid of glasses.  Though note that with every diopter, the distance you can see without glasses, increases.  So every diopter is a win and notable improvement.  

Nobody goes straight from skinny to Arnold Schwarzenegger.  

Schwarzensteiner.

Here’s Jerry who went from -5.25 to -2.50.  

Or here we got this improvement update going from exactly 5.5 (yes it’s -5.50 said correctly):

And then there is Elina who reduce a huge amount from starting at around 5.5 eyesight:

So, what’s the verdict here?

5.5 is bad eyesight.

The Video: Is 5.5 Eyesight Bad

There you have it.

And it’ll probably get worse, unless you take steps to make it get better.   Steps that will be slightly easier than for example, learning to play guitar, or getting competitive at triathlons.  But way harder than scrolling through Instagram or looking up some “here’s five magical steps to get rid of 5.5 bad eyesight glasses, bro”.

Put in work, mainly in the learning, fix your eyes.  

Start with any of these (free is an option).

Cheers,

-Jake