How Do Progressive Lenses Work?
When the wisdom age of 40 hits, vision changes are bound to occur. It’s quite common to experience eye problems, one of them includes Presbyopia. It is a gradual loss of our eye’s ability to focus on nearby objects. It’s a refractive error that happens due to ageing and makes it difficult to read the daily newspaper, sew or write. You develop a blurry vision that doesn’t allow you to identify objects clearly.
Progressive lenses, also known as varifocals, help to correct the vision problems and allows you to see clearly. However, since progressive lenses are advanced with new features, as opposed to single vision lenses, people find it difficult to understand how it works.
In the section below, we’ll get into the details of how progressive lenses work, how they’re different from bifocals and their adaptability.
What are Varifocal Lenses?
Varifocal lenses offer progressive focal power to correct your vision and do multi-distance tasks. They are also known as multifocal lenses as they’re made out of three distance lenses incorporated into one lens type. Varifocals are known as progressive lenses due to their progression of focal power that allows you to see at different distances.
Based on your vision requirements, varifocals allows you to see at three vision zones — close, intermediate and distance vision. The uppermost section of varifocals is for distance vision, the intermediate portion allows to see at arm’s length, while the lowest portion is for seeing close-by objects. Your vision progresses from looking at the sky to reading a book without any discontinuity.
How do Progressive Lenses Work?
By looking at the different vision zones in progressive lenses, you are able to see different distances effortlessly. The top portion allows you to see things that are far away, while the bottom portion allows you to read or write. However, there’s also a section present between the top and bottom part of the lenses. Amid these two sections lies a “corridor”, a narrow section for an intermediate vision that combines the distance and near powers.
There’s also an unusable area known as “visual distortion” at the outer edges of the progressive lenses. The distortion helps to smoothly transition from the top to the bottom of the lenses. You start with the distance prescription (if any) at the topmost portion of the lens and increase as you move to the bottom part of lenses. Simply, move your head position to focus through the different areas of the lens.
Shift your head in the upwards direction to view objects in the distance, hold it straight when doing computer work and lower inwards for near distance objects. Varifocals contain a beautiful aesthetic to them as it comes with no line segments that make people appear old, but it also offers smooth progression by preventing visual discontinuity when you shift your eyes from one zone to another.
How is Bifocal Different From Varifocal?
Bifocal lenses, as the name suggests, contain only two focal lenses. It only helps to see far and near distance objects. The intermediate portion that allows computer work or offers an arms-length distance isn’t present in bifocal lenses.
The line that divides the two lenses apart, is visible in bifocal lenses that don’t look attractive and let your age show. Also, the division line obstructs the vision progression from far to near.
Is it Difficult to Adapt to Progressive Lenses?
Progressive lenses, due to their unique design and lens advancement, are often difficult to adapt. While some use these lenses daily quickly, most of us take a few days to finally achieve a comfortable vision while wearing progressive lenses. It’s completely normal to experience such problems as our eyes aren’t yet trained to live with the progressive lens. The different areas of the lens and the visual distortion can be a little difficult to understand initially, but given a few days, the brain and the eyes become familiar and automatically move the heads according to the vision requirements. It might take a week for you to adapt to the lenses comfortably but if nothing changes after a week or two, speak to your optometrist and get the lenses that rightly fit you.
