There comes a stage (usually in our early 40s) when we begin to struggle a little with any visual tasks close up. This is easily corrected with a pair of reading glasses but these reading glasses themselves cause some bother as they are a single fixed focus lens. We grow accustomed throughout our lives to the luxury of our perfectly engineered natural lens which manages to subtly adjust it curvature and allow us to change focus from the television across the room, to our computer at arm’s length, to our newspaper close up without us even thinking about it. Many of us spend our working lives in an office type set up where one moment we may be looking at printed spreadsheet, the next we’re looking at our desktop PC and then we’re talking to a colleague on the other side of a desk. These three distances all require slightly different prescriptions so there’s no way we can give you a satisfactory solution with basic reading glasses.
An old fashioned solution to these type of problems is the bifocal ‘half-moon’ lens. These lenses allow you to see far away for driving and television and also give you a reading lens right down at the bottom but they make no allowance for our mid distance computer vision and rarely work well for office workers.
Varifocal/multifocal/progressive lenses have long been seen as the best option for these circumstances. They do however themselves have some potential pitfalls for office use. The top portion of the traditional varifocal is designed for far distance. Often in our office set up, we have our computer screen at eye level meaning we need to tilt our head back a little to use the mid distance poerion.
Find out more about SEIKO varifocals here
Fortunately we’re now using some excellent new options to solve this problem and we’re having great feedback at both our Barry and Penarth practices.
Both SEIKO INDOOR and SEIKO COMPUTER Xtra are designed with today’s workstation set up in mind meaning you can now have a great wide field of view with excellent clarity at all room distances without the need for excessive head movement and uncomfortable posture and this ultimately gives less fatigue.
As an independent optician, although we’re a SEIKO lens specialist, we use whatever products we feel are best for you. As well as the SEIKO lenses, we’ve had great success with Shamir lenses designed for indoor use. Their website also gives nice explanations of what to expect from their range of lenses and how they benefit you. Shamir occupational lenses
Call in and have a chat with our optometrists or dispensing opticians and we’ll find a solution that is designed specifically for you. We’ve also got some great apps on our iPads so we can give you an easy to understand demo of their benefits. You’re not just a number to us at Arbuthnot Opticians, we want to give you the best and make sure you leave us with perfect pair of glasses for your lifestyle.
