What Are Bifocal Contact Lenses?


by Ken Wilssens - Date: 2007-04-18 - Word Count: 658 Share This!

You may be used to regular eyeglasses, or contacts, with one special lens prescription, but a bifocal has two in one - and a bifocal contact lens is also a dual lens, so it is sort of like wearing two sets of glasses at the same time.

The way a bifocal contact lens works is that it, like a normal bifocal eyeglass lens, has two ranges of vision, or prescriptions. For example, if you need one kind of lens to help correct your vision up close, then obviously it will make looking at a distant object more difficult and blurred, perhaps to the point that it will give you symptoms like headache and vertigo without a matter of moments.

To alleviate the need for two sets of eyeglasses, doctors long ago engineered the bifocal, so that one set of lenses did the job of two, and recently they figured out how to do the same thing in a bifocal contact lens. The lens sometimes is divided into an upper half and a lower half; and at other times it may be designed in concentric circles, with one lens on the interior and the other on the outside of that first one.

When you use a set of bifocal contact lens contacts, your eye gradually adjusts to finding the different portions of the lens that do different things, and once your eye muscles are trained and coordinated, they automatically shift to and from the corrective lens that is needed at a particular time, for a specific task. For example, if you are reading and your eye needs to look through the lens that corrects your vision for close up viewing, the pupil of your eye will direct the attention there, and the light will be refracted into your retina at an angle which will assist you in reading small print close to your face. Then, if you shift and start to look off in the distance - for instance if you are reading a map or a compass and up close and then look up to see a mountain in the distance that you are trying to hike toward - the eye's focus will slide over to look through the other lens, and you will have a crisp image of the mountain in the distance, thanks to a different prescription lens in the other part of the contacts, that refracts the light at a slightly different angle to correct your vision for another kind of viewing.

Which is right for you, a bifocal contact lens, or a bifocal lens in traditional eyeglasses? This will depend on your preferences, mostly. Some people have trouble with contact lenses, and find them difficult to put in and take out, which is a routine that people who wear contacts have to adapt into their daily life, unless they buy the special kind that you can leave in 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for a week or more at a time. Even those types of lenses, however, have to be changed eventually, so some people find it problematic to wear contacts. However, for those people, the innovations in design and manufacture of contacts may provide some hope, because there are now contacts that are much simpler to manage and much easier to maintain. If you work in some particular kinds of hazardous environments or are a sports enthusiast who likes to wear goggles or other kinds of equipment, you may find that contacts eliminate the need for trying to fit everything over a pair of bulky traditional eyeglasses. On the other hand, some environments, for example around certain types of toxic gaseous chemicals, are not suitable for contact lens wearing, so you have to check with your eye vision specialist for this and all other topics related to contacts and eyeglasses, that you might need consultation and advice about, to help you make the wisest and most practical decision regarding the health and welfare of your precious eyes.


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For lots of information on bifocal contact lenses and other contact lenses related topics, visit Nr1 Contact Lenses at http://www.nr1-contact-lenses.com

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