Fact or Myth Do Glasses Worsen Your Vision Eye Doctor Investigates

does wearing your glasses make your eyes weaker or does not wearing your glasses make your eyes weaker or is neither of them true if you want to find out keep watching aloha everyone am dr rupa wong ophthalmologist on this channel we have little bit about eye surgery eye health eye makeup beauty all sorts of different things so if any of those interest you please hit that like button subscribe to the channel we'll keep it going today we're going to be talking about glasses wear reading glasses as you can see and lot of people always ask me in the office through messages on social media does wearing your glasses make your eyes weaker there's this belief this old wives tale that wearing your glasses is going to make your eyes dependent on them and that when you take off your glasses then your vision is going to be way worse so is that really true so first nothing about wearing glasses changes the shape of your eyeball it doesn't alter the muscles of accommodation which are your focusing muscles it doesn't train them in certain way so that they don't need to work as hard when you stop wearing the glasses it doesn't do any of that so you might be asking well how come when take off my glasses it seems way blurrier than before started wearing them for an extended period of time and here's the thing and it's so easy to fall into this trap know better this is literally what do for the last 20 years of my life is eye surgery and eye health yet when started needing reading glasses this year and started to wear them swore that when took my reading glasses off could not read as well it's just not true what's happening is that your brain is just getting used to the clear vision that you're seeing with the reading glasses on this holds true also for people that are nearsighted that are myopic so if you're wearing your nearsighted glasses and you take them off you might swear that hey used to be able to see that street sign over there the thing is it's just not true your brain just really likes to have clear vision and you get used to it the glasses themselves have not changed the way that light is focused in your eye in any kind of permanent fashion they just haven't so wearing your glasses absolutely does not create any kind of dependence on them know in my mind that it's not true but it's really easy to fall prey to the fact that it feels like it's so much harder to read pill bottle or just even scrolling through my social media seems lot harder now that i'm not wearing my reading glasses so you just got to stay firm in the fact that there's absolutely no published data which has demonstrated any kind of permanent change in the eye muscles the shape of the eye or the way that light is focused can tell you that with certainty now what about the converse does not wearing your glasses make your eyes weaker this one's kind of so for children it's completely different situation children younger than age 13 can develop something called amblyopia because they are in the critical period of vision formation what does that mean so basically means that when you have kid their brain needs clear vision because they are still forming the connections between the back of the eye between the eye and the occiput where the vision centers are so all of those connections are getting stronger and stronger and they figured this out with these studies with monkeys long time ago and they actually it was kind of sad you know they actually would make the monkeys need glasses they then basically sacrificed them which is the nice way of saying that they killed them and then they looked at the brains of them and they saw if it was very young monkey that needed glasses and they artificially made them neat glasses this young monkey that needed glasses and didn't get them then those nerve connections look like tree so think of it like tree branches and the side that needed the glasses that didn't get the glasses looked like like little dead tree versus the side that did not need the glasses was super strong and had lots of sprouts and branches so that's basically what's happening with children it's why if child needs glasses and it's at certain threshold level so not very mild nearsightedness but if it's certain threshold level if it's certain amount of astigmatism typically about two and half to three diopters of astigmatism if there's farsightedness again about three diopters of farsightedness and extreme nearsightedness all of these will cause blurry vision on permanent level if the brain is not being stimulated to grow those nerve connections so that's why it's super important you know i'm pediatric ophthalmologist so it's super important that children wear their glasses when the doctor says that they have to if it's mild prescription it's not as important but this is where you need to have communication with your doctor and ask them how important it is to wear the glasses full time but what about for older people 14 and above your eyes will not get weaker if you're not wearing your glasses so you can be rest assured with that because basically by about age 13 they're pretty convinced from all the studies that that critical period of development of neurodevelopment is already finished so basically that means not wearing your glasses is not going to cause as much harm as it would when you were younger it's not going to cause any harm it's basically just going to give you blurry vision so if you are 20 year old and you don't want to wear your glasses fine you're not going to cause any kind of permanent vision loss if you don't wear them all right guys hope that was helpful just little myth busting going on it's question get so often and thought we needed to address it if you have any myths that you've always been wondering about you want me to tackle drop them in the comments below if you've got topics other ones that are eye health beauty stuff or surgery things that you'd like or just more vlogs let me know really do read every single comment and totally appreciate you guys checking in here so mahalo for watching guys