Thursday, October 02, 2008

Pinhole Glasses and Other Vision Endeavors

This is odd. The people who make pinhole eyeglasses contacted me to see if I might like to try their product and write about it here. Sure, I'm game.

The idea of this invention is explained on the pinhole glasses website. Essentially it allows light in differently (through, you guessed it, pinholes!) and this in turn causes the image to register differently in your brain. So you "see" differently than when you simply look across the room wearing your regular glasses, or in my case, when you look across the room without your glasses on because you can't wear them to see anything within three feet of you and therefore you end up rarely wearing them at all unless you are driving!

I enjoy questioning the standard approach to, well, just about anything, which explains why I was game to try these glasses. If there is a way to improve my vision apart from standard glasses, I'm all for it.

So here's what I've found. First off, they really do reduce eye strain. And I love the way the frames fit on my face so much that I wish I could use them for my standard, driving glasses. I do find the pinholes a bit distracting, just as new frames tend to be when you first switch colors or sizes. The only real downside I can point to is that they are best used for tasks that involve sitting still, like watching movies. I just don't do enough of that to be able to use them for long stretches. Apart from computer use (where my eyes function rather well au naturale) I can't think of any significant chunk of the day where I am just sitting and looking across the room without needing the use of my peripheral vision.

Speaking of vision issues, my son has been seeing a Developmental Optometrist, Dr. Joseph Sobek, who takes a very different approach to the vision needs of children. My son's treatment has caused him to be able to read with much greater ease, because his issue was how his eyes focus. He now wears focusing glasses, and a series of exercises have helped strengthen how his visual perception as well.

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