Welcome to age 50!
With your newly increased age and wisdom, you’ve lost some ability to focus at all distances the way you did when you were younger. Remember 40 years old, when all you needed was a mild reader to help you read menus in the dark?
As you approach 50 years old, however, you’ve discovered that that neither your distance nor your reading glasses work very well for your computer. One is too weak, while the other too strong for the arm’s length distance of the computer screen.
If you’ve been wearing progressive no-line bifocals, you’ll know you’re in need of something separate for computer if you catch yourself tilting your chin to read your screen clearly. But the middle portion of your progressives is too narrow to see the full width of your screen. And craning your neck upward is not only ergonomically uncomfortable; many patients report dizziness due to prolonged tilting of their inner ear canals that they rely on for balance.
Patients who are on a computer for more than one hour per day will benefit from an eyeglass that corrects for the arm’s length “intermediate” distance of computer screens.
The least expensive option is to get a pair of basic single-distance eyeglasses that are corrected for the computer screen distance.
But the most elegant option is to get Computer Progressive Addition Lenses (Computer PAL’s). Unlike a normal progressive lens, the top of the eyeglass is corrected to be clearest at computer distance (you can’t wear them to drive) while they blend invisibly into your full reading prescription at the bottom. Because the difference in power between the intermediate and near prescriptions is not severe, there is very little distortion in Computer PAL’s, resulting in the highest satisfaction rate of any lens that we sell in our optical shop.
“Super-Readers for Boomers”
If you’re a Baby Boomer, you’ll appreciate how you can use a single pair of eyeglasses to read your computer, the newspaper as a book. They’ll become your favorite reading glass for all distances. Of course, there is a bit of an art to fitting and prescribing these properly, including which lens manufacturer and design to choose, where to place the optical center, and how to alter the lower reading power so that you can read a book page from edge to edge. Our “Secret Sauce” fitting results in 98.5% fitting success.
Dr. Krawitz also recommends adding a blue-blocking anti-reflective coating with these glasses.
