Some time ago, wearing glasses was a symbol of someone very smart, or even a nerd. Although, nowadays, glasses are more likely a fashion trend, an accessory used by lots of people, needing it or not. Still, there are some people who really need them to see a single sign on the street or a person on the other side of the room. For those who need glasses to see what the world has to show, glasses and contact lenses might be something very controversial.
There are a lot of questions involving those two things – glasses and lenses – and we talked to an Ophthalmologist, Adriana Bombonatti Vilas Boas, to solve them. The doctor heard some questions from the girls here from Cásper and answered them to break some ideas and myths about how to deal with a non-perfect vision. Here are the questions and answers.
HC: How can we put the contact lenses without harming the eyes or contaminating them? (question by Giovanna Galvani and Andressa Isfer)
AB: The first thing we need to do when putting lenses is washing our hands very carefully, and using the specific product to contact lenses (example: Opti-free), those products which are already disinfectants. You have to keep the contact lenses on their own specific pots with the chosen disinfectant and always use the product to wash the lenses themselves before putting them. You should never sleep with the contact lenses, even if they are for continuous use, because when we sleep with them, it can lead to some problems in the cornea; it’s easier to get an infection and your eye can even reject the lenses. To put on the lenses without harming your eyes, you have to hold them with the tip of your finger and gently touch the center of your eye.
Credits: Reproduction/Pinterest
HC: When does the degree stops to raise? (question by Catalina de Vera)
AB: Normally, the average age is between 21 and 22 years old. But there are some people who have the degree stabilized with 18 or 19 years old and can already think about the corrective surgery. On the other hand, there are some people whose degree only stops to raise with 25 years old or those specific cases, with malignant myopia, in which the degree never stops raising. If the person has only started using glasses with 17/18 years old, the degree gets stabilized only with 28/29 years old. But if the person starts using glasses between 6 and 7 years, the degree stops raising between 21 and 22 years.
HC: Which are the differences between the hard lenses and the soft lenses?
AB: The principal difference between them is that the person who uses the hard lenses is someone who has Keratoconus (ceratocone in Portuguese – a disease that affects the shape of the cornea). With those people, glasses usually are not very effective, so the lenses help to get the vision improved. Gel lenses are softer, so the adaptation to the eye is easier, it is indicated for a person who has a sensible eye, because it doesn’t bother so much. But the hard one, if well adapted, can be very comfortable. There are some differences between their expiring date either. The hard lenses usually are for an entire year, in another hand, there are the gel lenses for a longer use – the annual ones – and those for a shorter period – daily, monthly and biweekly.
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HC: With which frequency do we need to go to the ophthalmologist to check our degree?
AB: Once a year is the most indicated period, but if the patient is in the puberty age and the degree keeps raising too much, it is better to come every 6 months.
HC: How can we notice that our degree has changed? (question by Amanda Ravelli)
AB: In a person who has myopia, you can notice that the degree is low when the patient starts to squeeze their eyes to see further. That happens because the eye with myopia is a little bigger than the normal eye and that leads to a blur in the distant objects and squeezing the eyes make the blur fade away. In the case of a person with hypermetropia, usually the patient has to force their eyes so they can see the closer things, like for reading, and that leads to a headache. For those who have astigmatism, you can notice that the degree is low if you look at your car lights in the street and they get blurry.
Credits: Reproduction/Pinterest
HC: Which are the recommendations of lenses for people who have sensible eyes? (question by Amanda Ravelli)
AB: For those who have sensible eyes the most indicated lenses are the gel ones, if the person has a low degree. The soft lenses are going to bother less than the hard ones.
HC: Nowadays, people between 18 and 20 years old already use glasses, a fact that didn’t happen in our parent’s generations. Why is that? Is that related with the fact that we are always in the phone and computer? (question by Gabrielle Vianna)
AB: It’s a fact that all those technological things makes our vision tired. The muscles that work in our eyes get contracted when we are reading something close and relax when we are seeing something far. That’s why, when we stay a long time reading small things or things from a closer look and then we look to a distant thing, our eye seems tired and less relaxed. For that not to happen, the indicated thing to do is: for each half an hour looking to something closely, look to something far for 30 seconds, it makes your vision relax. Therefore, that idea of stressed vision is getting the degrees higher and making people use glasses earlier, like in children cases, that are already addicting their vision to closer objects – such as cellphones, computers and tablets. Although, the number of people who have myopia is getting higher because children are adapting to the idea of looking to closer things since they are 2 or 3 years old. Further, the children that only plays inside their houses, with tablets and cell phones, are not being exposed to sunlight and those facts stimulate the myopia development.
Those were some questions made by casperians when asked about glasses and lenses. Most of the girls prefer to use glasses, or moved by fear of harming their eyes, or moved by the affliction of using lenses – and never thought about using them – like in Amanda Ravelli’s case.
For Gabrielle Vianna (who has a 1,5-myopia degree), for example, she has sensible eyes – like Amanda – and the lenses make her eyes burn. She needs glasses since she was 7 years old and never thought about the corrective surgery, because she doesn’t want to pass through one and already got used with the glasses. Camila Junqueira, – who uses glasses since she was 7 years either and has a 7-myopia degree – on the other hand, doesn’t like the fact that she depends on the glasses/contact lenses 100%, and manages to change between them depending on the place she goes. If she is just going to college, she uses glasses, but for parties, beach and swimming pools, she wears her lenses.
Credits: Honeymix
At the same time, Andressa Isfer had a problem with her contact lenses – which she used all the time – and had to stop the use and go to the glasses. Nowadays she doesn’t wear the lenses like she did before. She needs glasses since she was 9 or 10 years old and making the surgery is the thing she is looking for, but is waiting until the degree gets stabilized, which is 4,25-myopia nowadays.
Howsoever, all people who needs either glasses, either contact lenses can change between them, since they do the indicated tests and take the proper choices, based on their needs and anatomy, whenever they want to try an unusual way to see what they normally can’t with their own eyes.