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Counter anecdata. I'm 39, right eye slightly myopic since I was a kid. Never needed glasses. Always prefered using the computer in the dark since when I was a t

• rootusrootus 5y ago
  40s are pretty rough when it comes to vision. At 39 my vision was perfect. At 47 I still have 20/20 father away than arms reach but closer than that it’s crap. When it started to change it was quick.
  • yawgmoth 5y ago
    Is it common for people around 50 to get Lasik or a similar procedure to counteract this?
    • 300bps 5y ago
      What they are describing is presbyopia. It's caused by the hardening of your lens as you age that makes it less able to change shape to focus on close-up things. No fix that I'm aware of but there are work-arounds: 1) For people that already wear glasses, use bifocal/trifocal/progressive lenses 2) For people that don't wear corrective lenses, use "reading glasses" and constantly put them on and take them off as you switch between looking at close/distant things. For contact lens wearers, there are some options: 1) Bifocal contact lenses. These gave me a constant headache. 2) Monovision. Essentially one eye tuned to distance and one tuned to close-up. I could not get used to this. There are some surgery options but really only to give you something like monovision through surgery instead of contacts. Unfortunately there's no fix for the root problem that I am aware of.
      • rootusrootus 5y ago
        > 2) For people that don't wear corrective lenses, use "reading glasses" and constantly put them on and take them off as you switch between looking at close/distant things. This is my situation. It sucks. I only have one really good pair of reading glasses; I am starting to think the strategy of having a dozen pairs all over the house might be a better option. What's worse, for me personally, is that I get motion sick really quickly with the glasses on. I have to work quickly when I need them to see something.
      • dugmartin 5y ago
        Presbyopia sneaks up on you. A few years ago I was teasing my older brother (in his early 50s) about the reading glasses he was wearing. He told me to try them out and when I did I felt like a gained a super-power - I hadn't realized my closeup vision had become "fuzzy" until then (I've had perfect vision all my life). Fast forward to today, my wife and I, both 50, have many sets of dollar store 1.25x reading glasses strewn around the house. I try to only use them when absolutely needed. I imagine an optometrist visit is in my future within the next few years but I'm trying to hold out.
        • rootusrootus 5y ago
          My wife, who is three years younger than me, used to tease me when she caught me squinting at something, or doing the old 'look through your fingertips' trick to see read some fine print. Now she doesn't laugh anymore. Everyone I've talked to says basically the same thing as you. It sneaks up. You don't realize at first the compensations you are using, unless someone says something. Or when the first thing you do on a new computer is crank up the font size. LOL.
        • the_d3f4ult 5y ago
          You already figured out the solution. The optometrist isn't going to do much else for you unless you need a distance prescription.
    • the_d3f4ult 5y ago
      Lasik will not correct presbyopia unless you intentionally make yourself near-sighted. In that case you would need glasses for distance
  • rvieira 5y ago
    Anecdote: My eyesight is still pretty good for small print (I'm nearsighted, that apparently helps), but my partner (who recently passed the 40s milestone) started having trouble reading small font sizes in a matter of months.
• 300bps 5y ago
  I'm about a decade older than you, was on a computer 12+ hours per day since I was 10. I started wearing glasses at 16 for 20/40 vision and then switched to contacts at about 25 years old. My vision has remained stable since then except for presbyopia. That is really the only effect of age that I've experienced yet and it is a pain to deal with. If I don't have glasses on/contacts in I can read something right up against my nose with no problem but obviously have trouble seeing further away. If I have glasses on/contacts in seeing things close up becomes far more difficult. So if anyone has a fix for presbyopia, hit me up!
  • the_d3f4ult 5y ago
    There's no solution. The options you outlined above: Multifocal vs progressives vs readers vs mono vision are all we've got right now. There's some work on true accommodating prosthetics though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-1utP_UV3A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-1utP_UV3A