If you’re looking for the lowest power reading glasses available, you must be suffering from computer vision syndrome, chronic dry eye or another condition that makes using your eyes for close-up work difficult — even though you can see fine.
You see, low power reading glasses do help you see, but they’re really about helping your eyes feel better.
So what are the lowest-power readers you can get — and do they help? Here’s the information you need.
From Clear Up
The lowest low power reading glasses available are called “twenty-fives” or 0.25 reading glasses. That means the magnification is only 25 diopters — hardly anything at all. They’re hard to get, but you can have them specially made either at a mall eyeglasses shop or from a reputable online glasses company.
You can also get readers with magnifications of 0.50, 0.75 and 1.00 if you look around or order them online.
Choices with diopter numbers higher than that are usually readily available at drug and discount stores, but the quality varies greatly. These cheap choices usually don’t have an antiglare coating — which you need if you’ll be working at the computer — or a scratch-resistant coating.
Clear glasses are available, and these can do you more good than you might imagine. If chronic dry eye is your problem but you see fine, clear glasses can help keep air from heating and air conditioning vents out of your eyes while you work and also keep you from putting your hands on your face and eyes as much. Many people with dry eye syndrome rub their eyes, making them worse and irritating the skin of the eyelids.
If you see perfectly and don’t really need any magnification, you may benefit from magnification of 50 or 75 diopters anyway. Many products sold as computer glasses have a slight magnification in this range — although the exact strength of computer reading glasses isn’t always provided. Still, glasses for computer use usually include glare-reduction coatings and even perhaps a tint to reduce eye strain.
Everyone Needs Glasses
You may think it’s a bit of an exaggeration that everyone needs glasses, but everyone who works at a computer for a living or as a hobby needs some kind of glasses to protect their eyes from the intense monitor glare, wind from fans and AC systems and to help you counteract the negative impact of concentrating without blinking.
Choosing the lowest low power reading glasses makes sense if you can see fine but experience irritation. You may instead decide to go with computer glasses, which are often easier to find and usually include minimal magnification.
While getting low power readers usually means ordering what you want from a company that will make them for you, computer glasses are easy to order in a variety of styles.
And both choices really work if you want to reduce chronic dry eye symptoms, ease eye strain and feel better while working at close-up tasks.
Even when you can see fine, your eyes appreciate a little help from carefully chosen lenses designed to protect your eyes while making their jobs a bit easier too.
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