LouiseSJPP
Formerly Errecaldia
- Location
- Pays Basque, France
I've recently had to address the issue of being unable to see well, reading glasses getting me through at home but not a good solution on the bike or in the car. In recent times, long vision as well as short was becoming compromised.
Generally I hated the idea of wearing glasses full time, and hated the idea of bifocals even more. Specifically, I wasn't sure how to manage cycle glasses and sunglasses as well as prescription glasses.
So I looked at contact lenses, and its been a long haul to a solution, I have to admit. My diagnosis is presbyopia, the baby boomers' common complaint as the eyes' lenses begin to harden with age. For this condition, either multifocal, bifocal or monovision lenses are needed to achieve the joint objectives of short and long sight with natural lenses which cannot manage either unaided.
Multifocals looked good on paper, rings of alternate long and short vision prescriptions in the lens, the brain learning to select the shaper image from the range presented to the retina. In practice, although at first they felt good, I realized that they had a mid-range compromise where I could not focus at all, and generally gave a feeling of being in a rather fuzzy world. As a lover of the mountains, most of my cycling being up and down them, I did not want to lose crispness of vision, it wold detract from the sometimes harsh beauty of the mountains in clear weather.
I changed to monovision, where a distance prescription goes in the dominant eye and a reading prescription goes in the other. Sounds strange, and feels a little strange, I have to admit, learning to read with one eye and look at the distance with the other. They are a compromise, as all solutions are short of surgically changing the eye lenses themselves, but what they do offer me is a full range of perfect vision for most of the time: no sharpness is lost. Periodically, my lenses shift or dry, giving blurry vision, but for perhaps 80% of the time give excellent vision.
I also had to change from monthlies to dailies to overcome a protein deposition problem. Dailies are easier and better for the eyes, but are even more fiddly to fit than monthlies, very flimsy indeed.
This is what worked for me, but my advice to anyone wanting to try lenses for presbyopia is to find a sympathetic optician and then try all options. The trial lenses cost the optician nothing, but the consultation time does, so probably your local optician is better than a vision chain where numbers rule all. My vision settled as i tried lenses, so it helps to check the prescription often in the first few months too.
Now I can ride and see the mountains in crisp, clear detail AND read the everything the Garmin wants to tell me. I can even read the tiny torque settings etched into the stem! I ride a bit slower downhill because the wind getting behind my cycle glasses is a bit uncomfortable and as yet, I'm not entirely confident about my ability to judge corners with no stereoscopic vision. It's taken three months to get this far, but it has all cost less than a pair of glasses.
Generally I hated the idea of wearing glasses full time, and hated the idea of bifocals even more. Specifically, I wasn't sure how to manage cycle glasses and sunglasses as well as prescription glasses.
So I looked at contact lenses, and its been a long haul to a solution, I have to admit. My diagnosis is presbyopia, the baby boomers' common complaint as the eyes' lenses begin to harden with age. For this condition, either multifocal, bifocal or monovision lenses are needed to achieve the joint objectives of short and long sight with natural lenses which cannot manage either unaided.
Multifocals looked good on paper, rings of alternate long and short vision prescriptions in the lens, the brain learning to select the shaper image from the range presented to the retina. In practice, although at first they felt good, I realized that they had a mid-range compromise where I could not focus at all, and generally gave a feeling of being in a rather fuzzy world. As a lover of the mountains, most of my cycling being up and down them, I did not want to lose crispness of vision, it wold detract from the sometimes harsh beauty of the mountains in clear weather.
I changed to monovision, where a distance prescription goes in the dominant eye and a reading prescription goes in the other. Sounds strange, and feels a little strange, I have to admit, learning to read with one eye and look at the distance with the other. They are a compromise, as all solutions are short of surgically changing the eye lenses themselves, but what they do offer me is a full range of perfect vision for most of the time: no sharpness is lost. Periodically, my lenses shift or dry, giving blurry vision, but for perhaps 80% of the time give excellent vision.
I also had to change from monthlies to dailies to overcome a protein deposition problem. Dailies are easier and better for the eyes, but are even more fiddly to fit than monthlies, very flimsy indeed.
This is what worked for me, but my advice to anyone wanting to try lenses for presbyopia is to find a sympathetic optician and then try all options. The trial lenses cost the optician nothing, but the consultation time does, so probably your local optician is better than a vision chain where numbers rule all. My vision settled as i tried lenses, so it helps to check the prescription often in the first few months too.
Now I can ride and see the mountains in crisp, clear detail AND read the everything the Garmin wants to tell me. I can even read the tiny torque settings etched into the stem! I ride a bit slower downhill because the wind getting behind my cycle glasses is a bit uncomfortable and as yet, I'm not entirely confident about my ability to judge corners with no stereoscopic vision. It's taken three months to get this far, but it has all cost less than a pair of glasses.
