This is something that I get asked a lot. “Can glasses help with your eyesight?” The short answer to this is no. My eye condition (stargardts) is a genetic disease that causes a build up of something called lipofuscin on my macular. This is simply because, unlike the rest of the population, vitamin A which is good for the eyes, is actually toxic to mine. It is this that causes the damage to my retina (see picture below).
Glasses help correct people’s eyesight by allowing eyes to focus light on the right spot of the retina. This cannot happen in parts of the retina that are damaged and vision is being or has been lost as no light can pass through.
With my eye condition, it is central vision loss, so I still have clear and useful peripheral (side vision). Some people choose to wear glasses to aid their peripheral vision only, but this will not correct any of the central vision. As time goes by and the central vision declines, glasses for the peripheral vision man also stop being useful.
As you can see in my picture, I have glasses on with an orange lens. These (other than sunglasses) are the only glasses I use regularly, but they aren’t for correction, they are blue light blockers and have full UV protection for when I am using a screen, or lights are too bright for me and on cloudy days where sunglasses are too dark.
I hope this helps people underhand a little bit more about sight loss and blindness and why we cannot just fix this with a simple pair of glasses.
