Do Glasses Worsen Natural Eyesight? | Dr. Jeff Goldberg & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | We were living down in San Diego when you and I were both professors at UC San

00:00:06.360 | Diego and we had moved into a house and I found a pair of glasses a pair of

00:00:13.440 | reading glasses in a closet and you know we asked around you know did any of the

00:00:18.840 | grandparents leave some glasses behind nobody seemed to know who they were so

00:00:23.280 | we finally just decided like well I guess the people who moved out of the

00:00:26.880 | house just left a pair of glasses you know in this in the back of this closet

00:00:30.480 | and then I tried the glasses on and I looked at my phone up close and was just

00:00:37.260 | like oh my god wait a second I didn't realize how blurry my near vision was and

00:00:43.860 | this is back I was about 40 42 something like that so so I didn't even realize

00:00:49.800 | until I put on the readers and these were you know 1.25 magnifiers you know so

00:00:56.340 | also mild yeah fairly mild ones yeah and I'll tell you I got addicted because who

00:01:03.960 | doesn't like good vision right right I mean oh my god now I can make the type

00:01:08.520 | smaller on my phone I can you know it was wonderful and you can relax a bit I

00:01:13.080 | mean the musculature that's responsible for for moving the lens and focus in the

00:01:17.040 | eye and then all this extraocular musculature and we forget I mean I'm

00:01:20.100 | definitely going crow's feet around my eyes probably because I you know squint or

00:01:26.720 | something but you know just the ability to relax one's face it just feels like you

00:01:30.840 | know more more energy I feel like can be devoted to what we're actually looking at

00:01:34.500 | yeah I'm not making light of this yeah well pretty soon I just kept that one pair of

00:01:39.360 | glasses with me all the time and I would just keep them in a pocket and whip them

00:01:43.380 | out whenever I was you know working at near using my phone at a little greater

00:01:47.380 | distance like a typical computer distance I could still see the computer fine so it

00:01:51.140 | really started for like kind of that close-up phone it was it was I could get

00:01:54.780 | into here but not all the way into here and yeah and then pretty soon I was just

00:02:01.200 | totally addicted and so you know then I had to go buy ten pairs and leave them

00:02:07.380 | one by the bedside table you know one in the car one in the computer bag one on

00:02:12.160 | every desk I work at yeah because I'd leave them anywhere and forget them and

00:02:16.560 | that way I could just yeah exactly you know yeah so yeah so whether using the

00:02:25.920 | readers accelerates the progression of dependence on the readers is still not

00:02:37.380 | you know it's still up for debate you know some studies say maybe yes some

00:02:40.860 | studies say maybe no but certainly psychologically we get addicted to good

00:02:46.900 | easy vision and if you don't have to squint and you're if you're not straining

00:02:51.100 | your muscles and all of a sudden the text on your phone looks crisper again boy

00:02:56.900 | that's addictive you're you're gonna like good vision and so it feels like you're

00:03:01.040 | getting dependent and how much of that is changing the eye muscles and how much of

00:03:05.200 | that is just the psychology of wanting to have good vision I think probably the

00:03:09.060 | jury's a little bit out on that point but point being you're either either way your

00:03:13.380 | dependence will grow and as you continue to age 40s 50s up until about 60 65 the ability

00:03:22.780 | to shape that lens gets weaker and weaker and weaker and so you need to move from the 0.5 to

00:03:30.180 | the 1.0 to the 1.5 and to the coke bottle to the coke well thankfully not you eventually max out at

00:03:38.100 | about plus 2.5 or plus 3 because that's the amount of extra refractive power that you need in

00:03:45.740 | magnifiers to take the equivalent of your infinity viewing and bring it up to 14 inches to read it near

00:03:53.960 | basically you need a plus 3 and then you don't need any lens eye muscle action whatsoever so you kind of

00:04:03.720 | max out around 2.5 or 3 so because most people will hit this somewhere in their 40s this sort of like gosh I'm having trouble on the phone I think most people actually use that that's like kind of the first time for a lot of people they're like well I guess I should go to the eye office right see the optometrist or maybe ophthalmologist and when they go in they should be getting the standard in either of those offices will be to give you a full screening exam

00:04:08.720 | most people will hit this somewhere in their 40s, this sort of like, gosh, I'm having trouble on the

00:04:14.640 | phone. I think most people actually use that. That's like kind of the first time for a lot of

00:04:20.120 | people. They're like, well, I guess I should go to the eye office, right? See the optometrist or

00:04:24.500 | maybe ophthalmologist. And when they go in, they should be getting the standard in either of those

00:04:29.980 | offices will be to give you a full screening exam, including maybe it's the puff test or a blue light

00:04:36.860 | test or a little pen that can check your eye pressure and having a look inside and seeing if

00:04:42.000 | your retina and optic nerve look healthy. It's kind of screening for all the main diseases. And they'll

00:04:48.360 | tell you at that point, hey, you'll look great if you feel like your glasses aren't doing it for you

00:04:53.500 | in a year or three years, come back. Or they might say, hey, I've detected something. I'm worried about

00:04:58.840 | you. And they'll set up a routine for your ongoing eye care.

00:05:02.600 | I'm worried about you. And I'll see you later.

00:05:03.600 | Bye.

00:05:04.600 | Bye.

00:05:05.600 | Bye.

00:05:06.600 | Bye.

00:05:06.600 | Music by Ben Thede

Do Glasses Worsen Natural Eyesight? | Dr. Jeff Goldberg & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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