Diopters. We stopped calling glasses “prescriptions” a while back, since we don’t believe a reasonable educated individual needs a so-called professional to tell them which piece of clear, curved piece of plastic to buy. (or conversely, keep you from making your own diopter choices)
If anything, we believe that most of the mainstream will give you more diopters than you need, causing progressive myopia and all sorts of long term risky side effects. We feel strongly about education you on the subject of testing your own refraction, of making your own diopter choices. Glasses are far less dangerous than lots of over-the-counter drugs! Read this section for all things related to diopters, learn about the fascinating world of bending light (to your will).
Explained: The Diopter Bubble
Ever hear of the anti-vaxxers? Of course you have. Just like the anti-vaccine contingent, there's an anti-glasses fan club on the Internets. Now I'm not here to judge anyone (or just everyone equally). I can't conclusively tell you whether some vaccines aren't a brilliant idea. But the conspiracy theory level of anti-vaccination talk, that's a bit weird. What's also a bit weird, is the anti-glass-ers (as we'll just call them for now). There's far less of them of course, and [...]
Optometrist Says No To Toxic Astigmatism
You know my position on prescription complexity. No bueno. Ratio of diopters between left and right eye way out of control, all sorts of astigmatism correction, different for each eye, also with varying ratios and on this axis and that axis. Ugh. What a mess for your eyes. Of course you can't just quit such a prescription, cold turkey. It took years and years of slowly tying those knots into your focal planes. Now you have to go slowly and [...]
Sensitive Eyes? Careful With Cheap Glasses
One of the posts today in the forum reminds me about the topic of lens quality. Whenever I have (not Internet) students with high myopia or generally sensitive eyes, I usually send them to one of the more fancy opticians. Why? Because there really is a pretty wide range of lens quality, and if you're sensitive you will notice a real difference. I've seen heavy migraines completely eliminated, and many other symptoms that go back to eyesight go away, with [...]
23 Billion Euros
My morning Twitter contributions (which you are so totally missing out on if you're not following) include Justin Bieber, a Monsanto match made in heaven, and ... wait for it. A little explainer first: Essilor is a lens manufacturer. One of the biggest in the world. They make the minus lenses you wear for instant clear vision, which a lot of scientific studies have suggested create the progressive myopia that millions of people suffer from. Essilor is celebrating 40 years on [...]
Troubleshooting Uncomfortable Blur
There's a long-ish thread in the forum right now, titled "first normalized experiences, can anyone relate". Topic of the thread, uncomfortable blur when moving from the full prescription to the first reduced distance prescription (the "normalized" prescription). It's not always easy to relate the subject of feelings, emotional subtext, into words that translate to others. What might be uncomfortable blur to one person, is just a welcome challenge to the next person. It took me some years to start working [...]
Headaches & Fatigue: Measure Your Pupillary Distance (PD)
PD (pupillary distance) can be an important part of your lens prescription, and notably affect your general well-being. If you have high myopia, and in particular high myopia and high astigmatism, an incorrect PD value can cause blurry vision, double vision images, headaches, nausea, and fatigue. In particular a small error in PD with a complex prescription might just give you a small headache sometimes, something that might be very vexing and difficult to pinpoint the cause of. I've had [...]