Specialty Eyecare

January is the ideal time to start getting eye exams

by
Eye chart and eye exam at Performance Eyecare

January is a great time to schedule your annual eye exam. Just remember, “a new year, a new eye exam” to help you remember.

Eye exams are often pushed aside by people with great vision and even those with poor sight, but routine exams are important regardless of age or physical health.

The eye doctors do much more than determine your prescription, if any, for eyeglasses or contact lenses during your eye exam. They also check them for common eye diseases, assess how your eyes work together as a team and evaluate your eyes as an indicator of your overall health.

Eye doctors are often the first health care professionals to detect chronic systematic diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes.

So what does e eye doctor check for during your eye exam? As mentioned above, it’s more than you think.

Eye doctors check the eyes for refractive error, which refers to nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism. This can be corrected with eye glasses, contacts or surgery.

They also check for amblyopia, which occurs when the eyes are turned or when one eye has a much different prescription than the other. In addition, they can check for strabismus (crossed or turned eyes), eye teaming problems, focusing problems, eye diseases such as glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy, and other diseases.

Be sure to schedule an eye exam soon, especially if you haven’t one in over a year. You can schedule an appointment at any of our MO or IL locations over the phone or online!

Specialty Eyewear

by

Just as “one-size-fits-all” doesn’t always fit, neither does one pair of eyeglasses for all situations.

Whether you want optimum vision and comfort for a specific activity, such as computer use, work, hobbies or driving, or you need glasses that provide an extra margin of safety for work or recreation, special-purpose eyeglasses will usually meet these needs better than your “everyday” glasses.

Computer glasses

If you spend much time in front of a computer, you probably already know that eye strain, fatigue and muscle strains are common problems associated with prolonged computer use. “Computer glasses” have lenses that are specially-designed to maximize your vision at the intermediate and close-up distances you use during computer work. Computer-specific eye wear will give you the best correction for these distances and help reduce eyestrain.

Reading and hobbies

If you wear bifocals, you may find you have to tip your head back slightly to use the reading portion of the lens. That’s fine for most things, but if you want to sit and read a novel, this head-back posture can cause neck discomfort and fatigue. Often, a pair of single vision reading glasses are a much better solution for prolonged reading and other detailed near vision tasks, such as sewing or needlepoint work.

Working in the yard or with power tools

Lawn mowers, power trimmers, grinding tools and other power tools can all cause serious eye injuries from high-speed projectiles. Even something as simple as hammering a nail can cause flying debris. Safety glasses are a must for these activities.

Sports Eye Wear

Did you know that wearing specially-tinted eyeglass lenses can improve your visual acuity on the tennis court, golf course or on the slopes? Sport-specific eyewear can enhance performance by improving visual clarity while protecting your eyes from injury.

Driving glasses

Driving glasses come in two different categories: sunglasses designed specifically for driving and clear prescription driving glasses. Many sunglasses made for driving feature polarized lenses to reduce glare and special tints to enhance contrast for safer, more comfortable vision on the road on sunny days. Eyeglasses for night driving should include your distance prescription and anti-reflective (AR) coating to reduce the glare from streetlights and oncoming headlights and allow more light to reach your eyes for better vision on dark roadways.

We can help

Nearly everyone can benefit from specialty eyewear. Let us know about all the different things you like to do, and we can tell you about the best special-purpose eyewear to fit your needs.

Colored contacts could add to your style

by
Are there benefits to using colored contacts

If you’re looking to create a subtle, bold or anywhere in between look, getting colored contact lenses might be the way to go.

Prescription color contacts can correct your myopia, hyperopia or astigmatism while enhancing or completely changing your eye color. Plano color contacts are worn purely for cosmetic purposes and have no lens power to correct vision.

Color contacts come in three kinds of tints:

Visibility tint. This is usually a light blue or green tint added to the lens, just to help you see it better during insertion and removal or if you drop it. Visibility tints are relatively faint and do not affect your eye color.

Enhancement tint. This is a solid but see-through tint that is a little darker than a visibility tint. This is meant to enhance the natural color of your eyes. This type of tint is usually best for people with light-colored eyes and want to make their eyes more intense.

Opaque tint. This is a non-transparent tint that can change your eye color immediately. If you have dark eyes, you’ll need this type of color contact lens to change your eye color.

So, which color should you choose?

Those with light color eyes should choose an enhancement tint that defines the edges of your iris and deepens your natural color if you’re going for a more subtle look. If you want to experiment with a different eye color while still looking natural, you might want to choose a gray or green contact lens if your natural eye color is blue.

Those with dark eyes should choose opaque colored tints. For a natural-looking change, try a lighter honey brown or hazel colored lens. If you want to really stand out from the crowd, go for contact lenses in vivid colors, such as blue, green or violet.

Performance Eyecare carries contacts for ‘hard-to-fit’ eyes

by
eye doctor in Swansea IL & St. Louis

Not everyone is an ideal candidate for contact lenses. If you have one or more of the following conditions, contact lens wear may be more difficult:

  • astigmatism
  • dry eyes
  • presbyopia
  • giant papillary conjunctivitis (GPC)
  • keratoconus
  • post-refractive surgery (such as LASIK)

But “difficult” doesn’t mean impossible. Often, people with these conditions can wear contacts quite successfully. Let’s take a closer look at each situation – and possible contact lens solutions.

Contact lenses for astigmatism

Astigmatism is a very common condition where the curvature of the front of the eye isn’t round, but is instead shaped more like a football or an egg. This means one curve is steeper or flatter than the curve 90 degrees away. Astigmatism won’t keep you from wearing contact lenses – it just means you need a different kind of lens.

Lenses specially designed to correct astigmatism are called “toric” lenses. Most toric lenses are soft lenses. Toric soft lenses have different corrective powers in different lens meridians, and design elements to keep the lens from rotating on the eye (so the varying corrective powers are aligned properly in front of the different meridians of the cornea).

In some cases, toric soft lenses may rotate too much on the eye, causing blur. If this happens, different brands that have different anti-rotation designs can be tried. If soft lens rotation continues to be a problem, gas permeable (GP) lenses (with or without a toric design) can also correct astigmatism.

Dry eyes can make contact lens wear difficult and cause a number of symptoms, including:

  • a gritty, dry feeling
  • feeling as if something is in your eye
  • a burning sensation
  • eye redness (especially later in the day)
  • blurred vision

If you have dry eyes, the first step is to treat the condition. This can be done a number of ways, including artificial tears, medicated eye drops, nutritional supplements, and a doctor-performed procedure called punctal occlusion to close ducts in your eyelids that drain tears away from your eyes.

Once the dry eye condition is treated and symptoms are reduced or eliminated, contact lenses can be tried. Certain soft contact lens materials work better than others for dry eyes. Also, GP lenses are sometimes better than soft lenses if there’s a concern about dry eyes since these lenses don’t dry out the way soft lenses can.

Replacing your contacts more frequently and reducing your wearing time each day (or removing them for specific tasks, such as computer work) can also reduce dry eye symptoms when wearing contacts.

Contact lenses for giant papillary conjunctivitis (GPC)

Giant papillary conjunctivitis (GPC) is an inflammatory reaction on the inner surface of the eyelids. One cause of GPC is protein deposits on soft contact lenses. (These deposits are from components of your tear film that stick to your lenses and become chemically altered.)

Usually, changing to a one-day disposable soft lens will solve this problem, since you just throw these lenses away at the end of the day before protein deposits can accumulate on them. Gas permeable lenses are also often a good solution, as protein deposits don’t adhere as easily to GP lenses, and lens deposits on GP lenses are more easily removed with daily cleaning.

In some cases of GPC, a medicated eye drop may be required to reduce the inflammation before you can resume wearing contact lenses.

Contact lenses for presbyopia

Presbyopia is the normal loss of focusing ability up close when you reach your 40s.

Today, there are many designs of bifocal and multifocal contact lenses to correct presbyopia. Another option for presbyopia is monovision. This is wearing a contact lens in one eye for distance vision and a lens in the other eye that has a modified power for near vision.

During your contact lens fitting we can help you decide whether bifocal/multifocal contact lenses or monovision is best for you.

Contact lenses for keratoconus

Keratoconus is a relatively uncommon eye condition where the cornea becomes thinner and bulges forward. The term “keratoconus” comes from the Greek terms for cornea (“kerato”) and cone-shaped (“conus”). The exact cause of keratoconus remains unknown, but it appears that oxidative damage from free radicals plays a role.

Gas permeable contact lenses are the treatment option of choice for mild and moderate keratoconus. Because they are rigid, GP lenses can help contain the shape of the cornea to prevent further bulging of the cornea. They also can correct vision problems caused by keratoconus that cannot be corrected with eyeglasses or soft contacts.

In some cases, a soft contact lens is worn under the GP lens for greater comfort. This technique is called “piggybacking.” Another option for some patients is a hybrid contact lens that has a GP center, surrounded by a soft “skirt”.Contact lenses after corrective eye surgery

More than one million Americans each year have LASIK surgery to correct their eyesight. Sometimes, vision problems remain after surgery that can’t be corrected with eyeglasses or a second surgical procedure. In these cases, gas permeable contact lenses can often restore visual acuity and eliminate problems like glare and halos at night.

GP lenses are also used to correct vision problems after corneal transplant surgery, including irregular astigmatism that cannot be corrected with eyeglasses.

GP lenses prescribed after LASIK and corneal transplants sometimes have a special design called a “reverse geometry” design to better conform to the altered shape of the cornea. The back surface of these lenses is flatter in the center and steeper in the periphery. (This is the opposite of a normal GP lens design, which is steeper in the center and flattens in the periphery.)

Problem-solving contact lens fittings cost more

Fitting contact lenses to correct or treat any of the above conditions will generally take much more time than a regular contact lens fitting. These “hard-to-fit” cases usually require a series of office visits and multiple pairs of trial lenses before the final contact lens prescription can be determined. Also, the lenses required for these conditions are usually more costly than regular soft contact lenses. Therefore, fees for these fittings are higher than fees for regular contact lens fittings. Call our office for details.

Find out if you can wear contact lenses

If you are interested in wearing contact lenses, call our office to schedule a consultation. Even if you’ve been told you’re not a good candidate for contacts because you have one of the above conditions or for some other reason, we may be able to help you wear contact lenses safely and successfully.

Keep your eyes safe on the golf links

by

The weather is warming up and many of us will be hitting the links to play a round of golf this spring. Before you take your first swing of the season, make sure you’re wearing the proper golf eyewear.

Did you know Performance Eyecare is one of only a few offices in the St. Louis area to specialize in golf vision and prescription sunglasses for golfing?

It’s important to wear sunglasses when you’re outside to begin with, but many sunglasses aren’t optimized for the game of golf. This is why we carry several different styles of golf sunglasses in our stores.

We all have troubles finding our golf ball from time to time, but it’s become a little easier with the latest eyewear from Rudy Project Ketyium. This eyewear features a green-tinted lens which enhances all green colors and helps enhance the contrast of the white golf ball.

It also has a wrap-style frame to provide greater eye coverage for the golfer and it can also incorporate a prescription.

While finding your golf ball easier is great, the main reason you should wear sunglasses on the golf course is for protection from UV rays. Sunglasses can limit your chances of developing cataracts and possibly macular degeneration as it protects the cornea, lens and other parts of the eye. You should choose sunglasses that block 99 to 100 percent of both UVA and UVB rays.

Stop in soon or schedule an appointment to Performance Eyecare and let us help pick out the best eyewear for your style and health. The eye care professionals at Performance Eyecare give each of our patients the personal attention and care that everyone deserves and ensures that your eye health is our number one priority.

Blurred vision at 40

by
Blurred Vision Eye Care at Performance Eyecare

Are you 40 years old and beginning to experience blurred near vision when reading or working at the computer? You may have developed presbyopia.

Presbyopia is widespread in the United States as the people in the country are growing older than in previous years. The growing number of older citizens generates a huge demand for eyewear, contact lenses and surgery that can help those with presbyopia deal with their failing vision. According to the World Health Organization, more than a billion people in the world were presbyopic as of 2005.

A major sign that someone has developed presbyopia is when they have to hold books, magazines, newspapers, menus and other reading materials at arm’s length in order to focus properly. When they perform near work, they may develop headaches, eye strain or feel fatigued.

Presbyopia is an age-related process, which differs from astigmatism, nearsightedness and farsightedness. Some treatment options include eyeglasses with bifocal or progressive addition lenses. Reading glasses or multifocal contact lenses are also available.

At Performance Eyecare, we create eyeglass lenses in our office with our state-of-the-art edging instruments.

Surgical options to treat presbyopia are also available, although some surgical procedures correct the problem only temporarily for a limited amount of time.

For more information or to test your eyes for presbyopia, schedule an appointment with your local PEC office!

Are You an Athlete? Let Us Protect Your Eyesight!

by

Every spring, both professional and amateur athletes head out to the play their favorite sports. And while many people love to look cool sporting their jerseys on the field, it’s important to remember to protect your body from injury, especially your eyes.

Why protect your eyes when playing baseball, basketball, or any other sport? Just imagine an errant pitch or a baseball lost in the sun going right toward your unprotected face. Perhaps another player on the basketball team accidentally hits you in eye with his or her elbow. These instances can cause scratched corneas, fractured eye sockets, and even permanent vision loss, all because you didn’t think it was “cool” to protect your eyesight in front of your friends or rivals.

And think about it – you protect your knees, shoulders, head, and other parts, bones, and joints when you play sports, so why not your eyesight? After all, broken bones and bruises will heal in time, but serious eye injuries can take you off your favorite sport’s roster permanently.

Luckily, we at Performance Eyecare can provide you with your sport’s eyewear needs! Check out some of the great products we offer!

For Baseball Players – America’s favorite pastime is a very visually-demanding sport, especially when you need to hit a 90+ mile per hour fastball. We offer some fantastic, special sunglasses just for you!

For Football Players – Since football players must wear helmets, we recommend that you wear our very own retainer contact lenses and take advantage of the Gentle Vision Shaping System (GVSS).

For Tennis Players – We have many types of lenses that will improve contrast and enhance the color of the yellow tennis ball. We also have lenses that are best for certain weather conditions when playing from sunny to cloudy and everything in between.For Golfers – Did you know that we are one of only a few offices in the St. Louis area to specialize in Golf Vision? That’s right! We carry several different styles of golf sunglasses. The latest is the Rudy Project Ketyium featuring a green-tinted lens that enhances all green colors, thus enhancing the contrast of the white golf ball while it is resting on the green, tee box, or fairway. This wrap-style of frame provides great coverage for the golfer and can also incorporate a prescription.

For Swimmers – Don’t let chlorine get you down! We carry an assortment of swimming and scuba goggles. You can even have your own prescription lenses inserted into them so that you can see whenever you swim.

For the Hunters – We provide several lens tints that can be utilized to achieve optimal visual performance based on various weather conditions,

If you’re ready to get out there and play your sports while protecting your vision, schedule an appointment at your local Performance Eyecare office today!

Fulfill your New Year’s Resolutions at Performance Eyecare

by
Performance Eyecare in St. Louis and Swansea, IL is the place to go for better eye health and to see more clearly.

Another year has come and pass which means it’s another year of making New Year’s resolutions, some new and some old, some reasonable and some way out of reach.

So what will your New Year’s resolution be for the new year? Here’s an easy one to choose: take better care of your eyes.

All it takes to start is one phone call and appointment. Here’s how to get started:

Get an eye exam

A regular eye exam is a good idea even if you think they are healthy. Many eye diseases don’t have symptoms so it’s imperative you have a yearly exam. Also, January is the perfect month for an eye exam because it’s easy to remember – a new year, new eye exam.

Get screened for glaucoma

You need to get regular glaucoma screenings if you are 40 or older. This terrible disease is known as the “silent thief of sight” because it can cause vision loss before you know you have it.

Update your prescription

Your eyeglass or contact lens prescription might be outdated or wrong for your activities. You should get your prescription checked out yearly, especially if you begin to get headaches or dry eyes after working at a computer.

Performance Eyecare is the perfect place for you to put your vision first in the new year. We offer quality services including high-tech eye exams to detect diseases and Lasik eye surgery as well as designer eyeglass and sunglass frames.

We can begin treating your dry eyes, red eyes, pink eye, eye infections and more starting with one visit. Seeing correctly is important during your daily activities, so isn’t it time you scheduled an appointment to see us soon?

Protective Sports Eyewear

by

Today, sports eyewear can be spotted on almost anyone who picks up a ball, bat, racquet or stick – whether they play in the major leagues or the Little League. Fortunately, coaches, parents and players now realize that wearing protective eyewear for sports pays off in several ways. The risk of eye damage is reduced or eliminated, and the player’s performance is enhanced by the fact that they see well. In fact, many clubs today do not permit their members to participate without wearing proper eye gear.

Initially, there was some resistance by children to “looking funny” when they wore protective eyewear. Today, sports goggles are an accepted part of everyday life, much the way bike helmets have become the norm. In addition, both children and adults like the image that wearing protective eyewear gives them: it shows they mean business on the playing field.

If you’re not wearing protective eyewear, consider this…

Prevent Blindness America reports that hospital emergency rooms treat 40,000 eye injuries every year that are sports-related. Sports such as racquetball, tennis and badminton may seem relatively harmless, but they involve objects moving at 60 miles per hour or faster. During a typical game, a racquetball can travel between 60 and 200 miles per hour. Another potential danger is that the racquets themselves move at high speed in a confined space and often make contact with one another.

Flying objects aren’t the only hazard. Many eye injuries come from pokes and jabs by fingers and elbows, particularly in games where players are in close contact with each other. Basketball, for example, has an extremely high rate of eye injury.

These are great reasons to wear protective eyewear. Another aspect has to do with performance. It used to be common for people with mild to moderate prescriptions to simply participate in sports without wearing their glasses or contacts. But sharp vision is a vital ingredient to performing well in nearly every sport, and participating in sports when you have less than 20/20 vision is counterproductive.

Features to look for

Prescription glasses, sunglasses and even on-the-job industrial safety glasses don’t provide adequate protection for sports use. Sports goggles are made in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some are even designed to fit in helmets used for football, hockey and baseball. Sports goggles should allow the use of helmets when the sport calls for it.

Lenses in sports eyewear are usually made of polycarbonate. Since polycarbonate is such an impact-resistant lens material, it works well to protect eyes from fast-moving objects. Polycarbonate lenses also have built-in ultraviolet (UV) protection and are coated to be scratch resistant – valuable properties for outdoor sports.

Polycarbonate is the material of choice for sports lenses, but the eyewear frame plays just as important a role. Different sports require different types of frames, which has led to development of sport-specific frames. Sport frames are constructed of highly impact-resistant plastic or polycarbonate, and most come with rubber padding to cushion the frame where it comes in contact with your head and the bridge of your nose.

Some sports styles are contoured, wrapping slightly around the face. This type of goggle works well for biking, hang-gliding, and sailing. Contact lens wearers especially benefit from the wraparound style, which shields your eyes from wind and dust.

A note about handball goggles

At one time, handball goggles for those with no need for vision correction were simply goggles with small openings in place of lenses. It was eventually recognized that the high speed of handballs compressed the ball enough to protrude through the opening and cause serious eye damage. All goggles worn for handball and racquetball should include impact-resistant polycarbonate lenses for adequate protection during these sports.

Important fitting considerations

Sport goggles must be properly fit to the individual wearer. This is particularly important with children, because there is a temptation to purchase a larger goggle than what is needed today so the youngster has “room to grow.” Some growing room is acceptable, since sports goggles are made to be somewhat flexible in their width adjustment. If the frames are oversize, however, they will not protect the way they were designed, leaving a potential for damage when there is impact to the head or the face. It’s a risk not worth taking.

By the same token, permitting a youngster to continue wearing goggles that he or she has outgrown can be just as dangerous. First, the frames will be uncomfortable, tempting the child to take them off. Secondly, the frames may obstruct peripheral vision, leading to poor performance with a potential for impact from unseen sources to one side or another. Review the fit of your youngsters’ sports eyewear each year to ensure that they are still providing proper protection and are fitting comfortably. Make sure the padding inside the sides of the goggle rests flush with the face and the eyes are centered in the lens area.

Eyeglasses for the busy lifestyle

by
Man sitting at desk holding documents, side view

Do you use the same pair of glasses for everything you do, or do you own a pair of specialty eyeglasses designed for specific tasks?

“One size fits all” is true in some situations, but it’s unlikely that one pair of eyeglasses is suitable in every situation, such as when you’re sitting at the computer or driving a vehicle.

The most important reasons for purchasing specialty eyewear, according to a survey by The Vision Council, include:

  • For a specific activity such as computer use, work, hobbies, sports or driving.
  • To see better in general.
  • For safety reasons to protect the eyes from harm while playing sports.
  • For cosmetic reasons.

Computer Glasses

You are at an increased risk of developing eye strain and other symptoms with the more time you spend sitting at a computer. This is the result of focusing on a very specific area for a long period of time. The computer screen can tire the eyes more quickly than reading a book or newspaper.

Computer glasses are designed for intermediate and close-up distances and will help you avoid eye strain.

Work and Hobbies

If you wear bifocals, you may realize that you have to tip your head back to use the reading zone in the bottom of the glasses. That is unless what you’re reading is in your lap.

You can purchase special work glasses that have the reading segment placed higher in the lenses. Special bifocals and trifocals for work-related tasks are called occupational lenses.

A separate pair of reading glasses might be helpful if some of your hobbies include beading, needlepoint, crafting or anything that requires intense focus at close distances.

Then there is safety glasses that can protect your eyes while working with hand and power tools.

Sports Eyewear

You can improve your visual acuity on the golf course or tennis court by changing the lens tint of sunglasses. Sport-specific eyewear can enhance performance by improving visual clarity while protecting your eyes from injury.

Driving Glasses

There are two categories when it comes to driving glasses: sunglasses designed for driving and prescription eyeglasses.

Sunglasses for driving have polarized lenses that reduce glare and make it easier to see in bright light.

Prescription eyewear for driving includes an appropriate distance prescription and lenses with an anti-reflective coating. This coating reduces glare from light off the front and back of your lenses and allows more light to enter your eyes for better vision when driving at night.

Safety Eyewear

Many people buy specialty eyewear for increased safety, such as safety glasses, sports goggles or shooting glasses.

Safety eyewear is made of ultra-durable materials and provides more coverage than regular glasses.

You can get the latest fashionable specialty eyeglasses at Performance Eyecare. Our team will work with you to discover which prescription works best and looks best so you can see safely in your everyday tasks.

Multifocal Eyeglass Lenses

by

Just as eyeglass frames have continually changed to reflect the latest fashions, eyeglass lenses also have evolved. This is particularly true for multifocal lenses – eyeglass lenses with more than one power to help those of us over age 40 deal with the normal, age-related loss of near vision called presbyopia.

History of multifocal eyeglass lenses

Benjamin Franklin, the early American statesman and inventor, is credited with creating the first multifocal eyeglass lenses. Prior to Franklin’s invention, anyone with presbyopia had to carry two pairs of eyeglasses – one for seeing distant objects and one for seeing up close.

Sometime around 1780, Franklin cut two lenses in half (one with a distance correction and one with a correction for near) and glued them together, so the top half of the new lens enabled the wearer to see things far away and the bottom half helped them see up close.

This lens, with a line extending across the entire width of it, was first called the Franklin bifocal and later became known as the Executive bifocal.

Modern multifocal lenses

Bifocals. There have been many changes to bifocal eyeglass lenses since Franklin’s original design, making these two-power lenses thinner, lighter and more attractive. Today, the most popular bifocal for eyeglasses is called a flat-top (FT) or straight-top (ST) design. The part that contains the power for near vision is a D-shaped segment (or “seg”) in the lower half of the lens that is rotated 90 degrees so the flat part of the “D” faces upward.

FT or ST bifocals (sometimes also called a D-seg bifocals), are available in different-sized near segments. The most popular version sold in the United States has a near segment that is 28 millimeters wide, and is therefore called the ST-28 (or FT-28 or D-28) bifocal. This design offers a generous field of view for reading, yet keeps the near seg small enough to be cosmetically pleasing.

Other available bifocal designs include lenses with round near segments and bifocals where the near seg extends across the entire width of the lens (Executive bifocals).

All bifocals, however, have a limitation: Though they provide good vision for distance and near, they can leave the wearer’s intermediate vision (for distances at arm’s length) blurry. Which brings us to…

Trifocals. Trifocal eyeglass lenses have an additional ribbon-shaped lens segment immediately above the near seg for seeing objects in the intermediate zone of vision – approximately 18 to 24 inches away.

This intermediate segment provides 50% of the magnification of the near seg, making it perfect for computer use and for seeing your speedometer and other dashboard gauges when driving.

Trifocals are especially helpful for older presbyopes – those over age 50 – who have less depth of focus than younger presbyopes. (Younger presbyopes may still be able to see objects at arm’s length reasonably well through the top part of their bifocals.)

As with bifocals, the most popular trifocals have a flat-top (FT) design, with the near and intermediate segments being 28 mm wide. Trifocals with 35 mm wide segments are also popular.

Limitations of bifocals and trifocals

Although bifocals and trifocals are very functional, they pose a problem – the visible lines in the lenses. Most people prefer not to advertise their age by wearing multifocal eyeglass lenses with lines in them that everyone can see.

The lines in bifocals and trifocals cause a vision problem as well. Because they mark well-defined changes in power within the lenses, as the wearer’s eyes move past the lines, there is an abrupt change in how objects appear. This “image jump” can be difficult for some wearers to adapt to.

Some years ago, these limitations of conventional bifocals and trifocals led to a major breakthrough in multifocal eyeglass lens design: progressive lenses.

Progressive multifocal lenses

Progressive multifocal lenses (also called progressives, progressive addition lenses, and PALs) are true “multi-focal” lenses. Instead of having just two or three powers, progressives gradually change in power from the top to the bottom of the lens, offering a large number of powers for clear vision at all distances – distance, intermediate, near and everywhere in between.

And because there are no visible lines or abrupt changes of lens power in progressive lenses, there is no “image jump,” so the wearer’s vision generally is more comfortable and seems more natural.

Because of these advantages, progressive lenses have become the most popular multifocal lenses sold in the United States.

The right multifocal lenses for you

The right multifocal lenses for you will depend on your age, your visual needs, your budget and other factors. Visit us today for more information about bifocal, trifocal, and progressive lenses and to get a customized solution to your vision and eyewear needs.

Non-Surgical Vision Correction While You Sleep

by

VRSS

VRSS, Visual Correction, Performance Eyecare Alton IL, Illinois Eye Doctor

Few things are as precious as our eyesight. When our sight is less than perfect, it reduces our quality of life by making everything more difficult. If you don’t want to wear glasses because they’re bulky on your face or you just dislike the look, and you don’t want to deal with contacts or can’t wear them, and you’re uncomfortable with the idea of having surgery on your eyes, another option to help your vision does exist.

There’s now a new technology, started in 2010, called the Vision Retainer Shaping System. This procedure provides non-surgical vision correction while you sleep. It works similar to a dental retainer, but it’s for your eyes.

The special lenses involved are only worn at night while you sleep. They gradually reshape the cornea to reduce (or even eliminate) myopia or astigmatism. The lenses are comfortable to wear and easy to care for. You’ll feel no pain, and you can wear lenses in both eyes at the same time. Take them out in the morning, and you’ll have clearer vision all day long.

The treatment is most effective on mild to moderate cases. More severe cases may still require additional vision correction. If you’re not happy with the results for any reason, this process is also completely reversible. Simply stop wearing the lenses at night, and your vision will gradually return to its original state.

Because this system doesn’t work on every cornea shape, only specially trained optometrists can evaluate your suitability for this treatment and perform the procedure. The optometrists at the Vision Centers of Performance Eyecare in St. Louis & Illinois have received the special training necessary and have the proper diagnostic equipment and expertise to perform VRSS.

Contact us today for a free consultation. We’ll review your prescription and let you know if the Vision Retainer Shaping System is right for you!